


Thunder and Lightning

by SKayLanphear



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: But it will have a happy ending, Fluff, I promise, Keith has long hair, Lance was in a bad accident, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Older AU, PTSD, Slow Burn, bed sharing, klance, maybe smut?, very bittersweet story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 11:20:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 62,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13433652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SKayLanphear/pseuds/SKayLanphear
Summary: With the war declared over, the paladins decide to take a much deserved vacation. And since Keith has nowhere to go, Lance decides to bring him along to meet the McClains. While Lance is thrilled to be home, he carries a lot of baggage these days, which makes it hard to fit back in. Time changes a person and Lance finds that even though he's finally getting everything he thought he needed to be happy, the only person he'd ever truly found "home" with had been fighting beside him the whole time.THIS WORK IS ON INDEFINITE HIATUS.





	1. Mile Marker

Lance tried not to let Keith's words from the wedding haunt him, but they sparked his nerves nonetheless.

_"I just don't see the point," Keith said, voice dripping in his typical moodiness._

_"What do you mean you don't 'see the point?'" Lance asked, aghast. "They're in love. Why shouldn't they celebrate it?"_

_"We're at_ _**war** _ _," Keith persisted, his gaze dropping to the tabletop while his lips pulled into a frown. "Who knows what could happen…"_

His words at Shiro and Allura's wedding had completely shot Lance's confidence for the evening. Of course, everyone realized that the wedding had been as much a way to uplift the coalition as it had been to concrete Shiro and Allura's relationship, but that hadn't been what Keith was talking about. It didn't matter that Shiro, general, strategist, and hero, and Allura, princess and paladin of the blue lion, were an alliance bound to play at the romantic imaginations of their allies. Team Voltron knew the truth. Which was where Keith's sour feelings came in.

It'd been such a beautiful wedding. Being there had nearly given Lance the courage to confess to their fearless, albeit rash, leader. But then Keith had completely stomped that into the ground. How could he confess when the idea of love had Keith so annoyed?

But the kicker was that Lance was almost certain that Keith felt the same way. They'd become close as the years had worn on, especially after Lance's accident. Best friends even, though still with an antagonistic streak (it was part of the appeal, to be honest). And while Keith still wasn't as open with him or anyone as Lance wished he would be, he kind of hoped that the two of them giving into their feelings would change that.

When it was just him and Keith, alone, Lance could feel it between them. The tension. The things unsaid. For a long time he'd been convinced he was making it up, but there were too many fond looks that he'd caught, too many times Keith had gotten upset with his flirting, and the physical touches—insignificant as they were—that Keith bestowed on no one else. Lance was almost positive that Keith had feelings for him.

Then he'd gone and said what he had at the wedding and, well, Lance had pretty much decided it wasn't worth saying anything at all. He was comfortable, really, so long as he and Keith could be friends and work together. They hadn't really had time for romance, that was true, but Lance still ached to clear the air.

And now… now things were different.

Zarkon was gone. Haggar was gone. Lotor was on the run. The galra empire was in shambles. The Blade of Marmora and the resistance were chasing down those trying to get away.

The war was, to a certain extent, over. Damage control had to be done, of course. There were criminals to catch, civilizations to rebuild. Voltron was still needed. Their positions were permanent—Lance knew that now. He'd come to terms with it. And so long as he could serve beside Keith and his friends—his second family—he was sure he'd be fine.

But even if their Voltron duties never ended, he wanted  _more_. Which was perhaps what had baffled him most about Keith's attitude. War or no war, they were in the same position. So what was the point of  _not_  being in love? Or not celebrating it, in any case. Might as well get their happiness where they could, or so Lance figured.

And that was what he kept telling himself as he tried to settle his roiling stomach.

The team was being allowed a much needed, and much deserved, vacation. The castle was in orbit around Earth, whose citizens were generally aware of aliens and the war at that point. Not like Zarkon wasn't going to eventually attack Earth, what with almost all the paladins having a home there. Of course they'd defended it, but not without outing the entire situation to Earth's citizens.

Hunk was going home to stay with his parents and the rest of his family. Pidge and Matt were going back to their mother—even though they had to deliver the horrible news of their father's death. Allura and Shiro were visiting Shiro's family, then taking their (much delayed) honeymoon. Coran was taking a happy break aboard the castle.

And Lance, well, he was going back to his family, obviously.

The only problem was convincing Keith to go with him. Keith, who'd claimed that he was looking forward to some alone time on the castle. He had no home to go back to on Earth and had claimed the castle was his home now. But even so, Lance didn't want to leave him. Especially if the whole reason he was staying behind was because he had nowhere else to go.

Inviting him home to Lance's family wasn't confessing, exactly, but it was… a step in the right direction.

It was  _something_.

Taking a deep breath, Lance whispered some encouraging words under his breath (you can do it! Keith is a butthead, don't be afraid of him!) before finally pushing forward through the control room door, which he'd been standing in front of for nearly ten minutes.

His focus zeroed in on Keith immediately. He was standing, or probably brooding, over by the left window, arms crossed over his chest. Lance almost rolled his eyes at how typical it was.

Shoving his hands into his jean's pockets, Lance hunkered on over before sliding right up next to him. He got the satisfaction of Keith whipping his head toward him in offended surprise (honestly, more as though he was offended that he'd  _been_  surprised) before his expression cleared into that wide-eyed, curious kind of cluelessness that Lance knew was far more "Keith" than any of his aggressions.

"Oh, Lance," he said rather stupidly. "I thought… I thought you'd left already."

"I'm about to," he confirmed, rocking back on his heels as he did.

"Oh, yeah, of course." Keith glanced back to the window, Lance easily able to read his disappointment despite his attempts to hide it behind dissatisfied neutrality.

"Lookin' forward to spending lots of quality time with Coran?"

"I doubt we'll see much of each other," Keith replied flatly. "Not like the castle is small or something."

"True, true." Lance nodded. "And you could always go to Earth if you wanted. You know, get some sun or something. You could use it, Snow White."

"Gee, thanks." Keith glared hard at the window.

"Just bein' honest." Lance elbowed him in the side, causing Keith to sway. "But hey, you're welcome to stay with me and my family if you do." Here goes. "We only live a five-minute walk from the beach."

Keith side-eyed him suspiciously. "Uh, thanks. I'll… keep that in mind?"

Sometimes Keith's inability to understand the subtle was enough to kill a guy.

"What I  _mean_ ," Lance went on, "is that you should stop by. There's totally enough room for you."

Keith snorted. "Yeah, I don't think your family will want me impeding on their time with you."

Lanced sobered considerably. "I don't care what they want." The seriousness of his tone had Keith flicking his gaze up to him. "You're not impeding. That would never be the case and if my family had a problem with you, which they  _wouldn't_ , then I'd have a problem with them."

His words seemed to shock Keith, his lips parting as he blinked. But within the moment, his brows were pulling together with uncertainty and he was once again looking out the window.

"I don't want to get in the way, Lance," he murmured. "Besides, what if… what if they don't like me?" His question came out as a whisper that Lance could barely hear.

"Keith…" Reaching out, Lance placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "They could never not like you. They wouldn't… they wouldn't feel any differently about you than I do."

Keith released a bitter laugh.

"Hey, I'm serious." Lance forced him to face him then, turning him forcefully by the shoulder. "They'll love you."

He didn't quite realize what he'd said until it was out of his mouth, and even then the reality of it didn't hit until Keith's big, dark eyes were searching his, those pale cheeks going slightly red.

Coughing awkwardly, Lance pulled his hand back and shuffled a step away, his own face flaring.

"Lance…?"

"Just come with me," he practically begged, barely managing to find the courage to look up again. "I don't want you staying up here all by yourself."

"I'll be fine."

"I know that!" Lance huffed. "I just don't  _want_  you to. I want you… I  _want_  you to come with me." He wanted Keith to meet his family. He wanted to show off how great their black paladin was and how great of a leader he'd become. He wanted… so many things.

"I… Lance…" Keith worried his bottom lip. "I don't know…"

"Please, Keith." Reaching out again, Lance placed both his hands on Keith's shoulders this time and offered up a reassuring smile. "Don't make me beg. Because I totally will and that would be so embarrassing for both of us."

Which finally had Keith cracking a small, albeit nervous, smile.

"You… You really don't think they'd mind?" he asked quietly.

"No, never. My mom will be thrilled to have you, I promise." He squeezed Keith's shoulders reassuringly. "She'll probably want to adopt you as soon as she sees your sad, orphan eyes."

Keith's expression flattened. "Fuck you."

Which had Lance gasping, before he fanned himself and batted his eyelashes. "Take a girl out to dinner first, Keith, my goodness."

"Maybe I don't want to spend a month with you after all."

"Too late, let's go!" Grabbing Keith by the arm, he turned and began to drag him toward the center of the room. Keith stumbled at first—a lame attempt at resisting—before giving in (which he did far more often than not these days).

They didn't have anything to take with them other than the clothes on their backs, but Lance asked anyway. He'd stuffed some knickknacks and other miscellaneous items that he'd gotten along the way into Red, but that was it. Everything he'd need to  _live_  on Earth was  _on_  Earth.

Keith didn't have anything take, so Lace deposited him on Black's entry pad, which had Keith furrowing his eyebrows curiously.

"Aren't you taking Red?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Then… why am I taking Black?"

"Are you kidding?" Lance asked as he headed toward the door that would take him to his own lion. "My cousins would be thrilled to see one lion, let alone two. Besides…" Lance rubbed the back of his neck. "You're the black paladin. You're our leader. I want them to… to know how important you are. To the team and- and everything."

Yes, he wanted to show Keith off. A lot. To everyone. To the whole world. Or at least his neighborhood.

"Oh… okay."

"And then you can always, you know, leave if, like, my family becomes too much for you, or something."

"Lance." He flicked his gaze up to Keith, seeing as it'd previously been on his shoes. "That won't happen."

Once again with the tender expressions that shot Lance right through the heart. Keith really needed to get that under control.

"Well, you know," Lance cleared his throat and turned away. "Just in case."

Deciding he wasn't prepared to say anything more, Lance stepped into the elevator that would drop him down. And his thoughts were preoccupied with Keith all the way to Red (but that wasn't really a new thing, as it were).

Red was practically laughing at him as he sat down in the pilot's seat, sans armor.

"Blue would never have laughed at me," he muttered, which had Red's mirth dying in favor of simmering jealousy. "Serves you right. I hope you think long and hard about what you did."

"Who are you talking to?" Keith's voice came through the speakers.

"Uh, just Red," Lance replied, grabbing hold of the control sticks as his lion's cockpit lit up. "She's being bad."

"Red's never bad."

"And see? This is the problem with you two," Lance lectured. "You're too indulgent of her. Never bad my ass. Pretty sure you almost died trying to impress her the first time."

"She was just testing me."

The castle hatches opened and Lance directed Red out into space despite her sour disposition. "That's what she wants you to think," he said, Black arcing down toward them in the same moment. "Cock and bull if you ask me. She just likes to be difficult." If they weren't in the vaccuum of space, they might have been able to hear her roar of protest. As it were, it simply vibrated up and down Lance's spine. "Yeah, yeah, complain if you want. Like I haven't dealt with cousins that were worse, you overgrown housecat."

"She's gonna eject you out into space one of these days," Keith said.

"She knows I'm right. You want to know why?" Lance grinned despite that Keith couldn't see it. "Because you and her are just alike, and I know you'd never throw me out into space."

"That's debatable." Pause. "Oh my god, Black, I'm not going to throw Lance out into space. Technically, he's already in space." Another pause. "I'm aware we're not wearing our armor. Lance isn't going into spa- Black, I know, you don't need to lecture me!"

"Uh oh." Lance snickered.

"Shut up, Lance. Black's all worried now, so thanks. Though I don't know why she's bothering to worry about you."

"Uh, probably because all the lions love me?"

"Sure."

"They do! Blue loves me, obviously. Red loves me even if she pretends she doesn't—yeah I know the truth no matter what you say—and Black must think I'm pretty rad seeing as she let me pilot her that one time you were kidnapped by the Galra and I had to rescue you." Red had been out for the count and Lance had been desperate.

"Pretty sure that's not  _all_  the lions."

"Pretty sure you thought having mullet was a good idea once, so your opinion doesn't count for anything."

"Uh, as  _leader_  of Voltron, I'm pretty sure that my opinion is  _the most_  important."

"And as lieutenant, I get to tell you to shut your quiznack when your opinion is stupid."

"Lieutenant? I didn't realize we had official titles now."

"You know it's true. You couldn't do anything without me."

Keith scoffed, but he also didn't object.

"Now let's go," Lance decided, turning Red toward Earth. "Your pasty butt needs the beach."

"I'm pretty sure I'll just burn."

"More entertainment for me."

"Fuck yo- You know what, you suck."

Punching the control sticks, Lance laughed. "Such inspiring words from our leader."

"Can you two quit flirting? Some of us are still in our lions!" Pidge's voice came abruptly over the coms.

"Yeah, it's disgusting!" Matt agreed.

Lance definitely hadn't realized anyone else was listening. And based on Keith's silence, neither had he.

"Sh-Shut up!" Lance said lamely.

"Wow, such wit, such-"

But Lance cut off communications with Pidge, before making sure to do the same with everyone except for Keith.

"Stupid Pidge…" he muttered.

Keith just hummed in what Lance thought was disapproving agreement.

As it was, they were currently looking at Asia, which definitely wasn't right.

"This is so weird," Lance muttered, pushing Red's thrusters to speed up as they headed around the globe. "Looking at Earth like this, I mean."

"Yeah, it is weird."

"Like looking at a map."

"Only more size-accurate."

"Yeah! Who knew Russia was  _so_  huge!"

Keith chuckled and Lance was unprepared for how the sound made his heart skip.

They slowed as they circled toward the southern end of the United States. "I can't quite see through the cloud cover," Lance muttered. "But home is down there somewhere."

"I see… Florida, I think. So that must be Cuba right below it."

"You don't think they'll shoot at us when we break the atmosphere, do you?"

"Well… they know who we are. And I bet Pidge, Hunk, and Allura have broken the atmosphere already."

"Yeah, that's true. Let's just go."

Punching Red forward, they were pushing through the atmosphere within moments. The clouds rushed by beside them, Lance bringing up the scanned map of the land below so as to determine their trajectory. When they broke through the clouds, Cuba was so close that the city lights were visible. Which had both of them slowing considerably.

"This is so  _weird_ ," Lance whispered, his stomach flipping at the sight of the island so close below them.

"Yeah, it- it really is."

"I mean, we're on  _Earth_! In our  _lions_!"

Lance couldn't decide if it was simply strange or maybe the best day of his life.

They were so close now that they had to pull up, their lions skimming a few dozen meters above the green landscape. The sight of the trees, the cliffs, the warmth, was enough to have Lance grinning from ear to ear.

"Where are we going?" Keith asked.

"Uh, northern part of the island. Varadero area."

"Er, okay."

"Why bother asking if you don't even know where it is anyway? Not like the lions have GPS."

Keith growled, but stayed some ways back, following on Red's right haunch.

"Hmm, there's the coast…" Lance muttered to himself as the ocean came into view.

"What are all those lights?" Keith asked. The sun was setting, so the city was beginning to cast all its light pollution into the sky.

"That must be Havana," Lance decided thoughtfully. "We need to go east of Havana." He turned Red slightly in that direction, but it was hard to gauge distance from above when he'd never done so before. And nothing looking familiar from the sky.

"Hmm…"

"Please don't tell me we're lost," Keith dared to say.

"We're not lost!" Lance shouted, Red slowing as he surveyed the landscape below. Black hovered beside him and, below, families in a small suburb were rushing out of their houses to point up at them. Red took some close-up images that pleased Lance immensely.

"Where are we, Lance?" Keith asked flatly.

"Hold on, I just need to find…" Lance peered across the landscape. "Ah! There!" He punched Red to travel a bit further north.

"What?"

"Central Highway 72," Lance said happily. "Or I hope it is." Taking Red further down, he aimed for an open area beside the road before dropping down toward the ground.

"Lance!"

"I'm just checking what mile marker we're at," he said simply. "Chill."

Keith remained above while Lance put on his thrusters and skimmed the side of the highway until he found a mile marker. Traffic slowed, maybe even stopped, but he was far too preoccupied with getting home to care.

"Okay!" he said as he took back off into the air, causing a few palm trees to blow nearly flat as he did. "We're just south of Matanzas, so if we head due north-west, we'll eventually see Varadero. Once we find that, I can find my house!"

"Uh, if you say so." Keith said as Lance took off, Black once again at his flank. The trip didn't take long and soon he could see the skinny stretch of beach that could only be one place.

"Varadero!" he announced and aimed Red for the less-populated area between Varadero and Cardenas. Once he had kind of a general estimate of where they were, he aimed for the coast. Dropping down toward the water, he scanned the beaches for anything familiar as they put on their thrusters and floated slowly down the edge. Red, meanwhile, was sending him images of humans running onto the beach to see them. It seemed to amuse her a great deal.

"There!" Lance said suddenly. "That's the beach near my house." The lions came to a full stop, thrusters still engaged above the water.

"So… where do we land?" Keith asked.

"Uh, hmm." Lance tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Let's just land by the beach I guess. In the water, so we're out of the way?"

"If you say so."

Directing their thrusters, they hovered above a small curve just off the beach before slowly landing, so as to prevent any huge waves from rushing in. Once the lions were grounded, they lowered their heads for disembarking.

Jumping up, Lance grabbed the one bag he had before sprinting from the cockpit. He practically vaulted from Red's mouth into the water, his whole body alight with excitement!

"C'mon, Keith!" He yelled as his teammate entered the water at a far slower pace. He seemed unhappy with the state of their exit and swam over to the Lance with a frown creasing his lips.

"The salt water has destroyed my clothes," he muttered.

"We need new clothes anyway. And it hasn't destroyed anything, jeez." Rolling his eyes, Lance reached out and grabbed Keith by the shoulders. Without mercy, he dunked him under the water, which had Keith flailing and sputtering when he came back up.

His long hair was plastered over his eyes and a slew of profanities erupted from his mouth.

Lance laughed and laughed. Until of course Keith came after him, which had him sailing through the water toward the shore. Behind them, their lions rose up into the sitting position before putting up their shields. In front of them, locals were rushing down the beach to get a glimpse.

Lance was  _sure_  his family was among them.

Just the thought had him swimming faster, his arms and legs pumping until he was touching sand beneath his shoes. Sprinting through the water, he didn't stop even as he broke out onto the beach. He slowed some then, scanning the thickening crowd that gestured and gaped at them. It was almost too much, the familiar white sand, the palm trees that lined the woods bordering the beach. The clear skies and pink-tinted waves (from the sunset). Even the breeze pulled his attention, the way it shifted through his hair and brought up the smell of salt and sunscreen from the sea. How many nights had he dreamt of this?

It almost didn't seem real and the fact that it  _was_  nearly had him breaking out into tears.

He was  _home_.

"L-Lance?" The voice reached him as he scrambled across the sand. He recognized it, the sound sending a shockwave through his whole body.

How long had it been since he'd heard his mother's voice? Almost five years.

The tears did come then.

"Mama?" The word felt dry in his mouth, his eyes scanning the beach as his steps slowed. There were a lot of people, many of them gesturing and yelling about the lions as well as the two boys that had dropped out of them. But Lance was used to that. It didn't pull his focus as he tried to find that familiar face. His efforts soon became desperate, his bag falling from his shoulder and landing with a thump in the sand. It lay forgotten within moments, as did Keith.

His family was there. His family-

"Lance…" His mother's voice again, this time so close that it had Lance's head snapping to the left. And there, as if the sight of them were unfolding from one of those pop-up birthday cards, his family's faces wavered into view. At the front, having pushed her way through the crowd, was his mother's familiar silhouette.

She was bit thinner and her brown hair a little grayer. But the lines of her face were familiar and the watery shimmer of her eyes—while punctured with shock—welcomed him home, as they had so many times before.

"Mom!" Lance found himself choking out, the soles of his worn shoes scraping against the sand as he shoved himself into a sprint. Her hands had come up to cover her mouth while tears slipped down her cheeks, mirroring her son's.

Lance didn't hesitate in the least when he reached her. How many nights had he lain curled up on his bed, thinking of his mother's comforting arms around him? Maybe he was a mama's boy, maybe he should "grow up," but dammit he loved his mom and he'd missed her and he'd been at war and he wasn't ashamed. He'd long since run out of time and patience for such shame.

"Oh, Lance," his mother sobbed as he wrapped his arms around her. The familiar scent of oranges and detergent surged up through his nostrils, making his tears come faster. She seemed shorter, or maybe he was just taller, but it didn't change the familiar press of her body against his. She was trembling, and he was too, and they were both sobbing and maybe everyone was watching, but he didn't care.

"Mama," he cried into her shoulder, sniffling as he did and holding her tighter.

"I knew- I  _knew_  you were alive," she said quietly, her hold on him nearly as tight as his own. "After we heard about what was going on out there, I knew that was where you were. I  _knew_  it was you."

Someone else was wrapping them both up a second later, Lance recognizing the familiar smell of cigarettes and coffee. His father. And then everyone was there, and they were all crying and talking and Lance was overwhelmed in the best way possible. He hadn't received so many hugs at one time ever and even though it was hard to recall all that was said and who said it and how many hugs he'd even gotten, it was one of the best moments of his life.

"Just look at you," his mother went on when she eventually stepped back. Everyone had quieted some, but they surrounded him nonetheless, wiping at their tears despite how fruitless the endeavor probably was. "You're so grown up." She reached up and lightly touched his cheek, where Lance knew he had a bit of five-o'clock shadow.

"Yeah, you really filled out!" His oldest brother, Chad, said as he slung an arm around his shoulder. "Not a spec of baby fat left on you."

"You're skin and bones," his mother countered, both her hands cradling his face.

"Still not as big as me though, huh," his brother went on, jostling him slightly. Chad had always been big. The biggest of them all. Shaped more like Hunk than the rest of the skinny McClains.

"I'm all muscle, unlike you," Lance replied, poking Chad pointedly in his rounded belly.

"Muscle or no, you're still a beanpole," his sister, Patrice, interjected, taking her turn to poke him in the side. She was the closest to him in age—only two years older—and they shared a likeness in appearance as well. They'd oftentimes been mistaken for twins. But Lance towered over her now. He hadn't even realized how much he'd grown.

Was he… Was he the tallest?

"Quiznak, I'm the tallest," he marveled.

"Barely!" His other brother shouted, shoving his way past Chad. Lighter skinned, like his mother, and just as much a beanpole, Ray had always bragged that he'd forever be the tallest of them all. Well, seems the tables had turned.

"Yeah, it's only like an inch difference," Sophie, his final sister and the second oldest, held up her fingers in a pinching like motion, before removing her glasses so she could wipe her eyes again.

"What's a 'quiznak?'" One of his nieces—Loraine he thought, though five years had made him uncertain—asked as she tugged on his jacket.

"Uh, Altean word," he quickly explained. "It's a bad word, don't say it."

"Are you teaching my kids profanity?" Chad asked, pretending to be aghast.

"Not in any language anyone on Earth would understand," Lance replied easily.

"It's an  _alien_  word?!" Teo, Loraine's little brother, asked with a gasp.

"Altean, so, uh, yeah, alien," Lance agreed. "But Alteans look a lot like humans. They have pointy ears, and their pupils are pink!" Though he wasn't trying too hard to make it sound exciting, both kids gasped in excitement.

"I can't believe you're still wearing this old jacket," his father said then, tugging a bit on his collar. "It looks like it's about to fall apart." Which was true. Despite the fact that it'd been nearly five years, none of the paladins had been too intent on giving up their original clothes. It was all they'd had from Earth and so they'd stretched them as long as they could. Lance's jacket had been sewn and patched together numerous times, as had his jeans. He'd had to replace his shirt with a black one, and even glued the soles of shoes multiple times. But of all the paladins, he had the most of what they'd left Earth with.

"Well, clothes aren't exactly top priority when…" Lance's voice petered off. He'd almost said "when you're fighting a war," but the strain that had abruptly entered his mother's gaze halted his words in their tracks. No need to think on things like that, not then. Yet, even so, Lance fiddled with the fabric of his black leather gloves. One of the few additions to his wardrobe that had become permanent.

He didn't need to ruin their reunion with things like war and… everything else that waited in the back of his thoughts.

He swallowed and threw out a smile. "Not exactly a priority when you're busy being awesome and piloting the sweetest ships in the universe." His light-hearted tone seemed to put his mother at ease, though his father squeezed his shoulder in understanding.

His father was a veteran. Lance had never really thought that someday he'd be one too. The thought sent a cold chill down his spine, but he once again pushed against it with a positive grin.

"Is that big black lion your ship?" Teo asked and excitedly pointed out at the water.

"Ah, no, that's…"

 _Keith_.

He stood some ways back, a single form apart from the crowd. None of the people that had come down to the beach had approached him, but Lance was suddenly aware of how many eyes were on them. And how out of place Keith looked, soaking wet in his worn and tattered clothes with Lance's bag slung over his shoulder.

"I pilot the red one," Lance corrected, before finally breaking away from his mother. He backed away from everyone, in fact, before taking a deep breath and reaching toward Keith. His fellow pilot appeared surprised, as well as nervous, and so Lance was gentle as he tugged Keith forward by the upper arm. "This is Keith.  _He_  pilots the black lion."

His whole family was looking at him, at Keith, and Lance was hyperaware of the way his fellow paladin stiffened at the attention, breath coming in and out in shaky bursts.

"But the red one is smaller," Teo objected, as if that made some kind of difference.

"Maybe, but it's also the fastest," Lance explained. "The black lion is the biggest because when we put all the ships together to form the giant robot, the black lion is the head. And since Keith is our leader, he pilots the black lion." There was a slight blush on Keith's cheeks and he leaned closer to Lance. Just barely—not enough to be noticed by anyone else.

"You're not the leader?" Loraine asked.

"Nope!" Lance shrugged. "Keith is much more suited to the job."

"Uh, I don't know about that," Keith finally spoke, his voice quieter than usual as his gaze darted nervously between Lance's family members. "I couldn't pilot the black lion without Lance. He's, uh, he's my lieutenant."

"What's a lieutenant?" Teo asked.

"It means I'm second in command," Lance explained, holding up a knowing finger as he did. "I'm Keith's right-hand man, literally."

"Literally?" Patrice asked, eyebrows furrowed curiously.

"The red lion is the right arm of Voltron," Lance replied. "The, uh, giant robot ship… guy." He was pretty sure the people of Earth knew a little of what Voltron was—they'd seen the robot when they'd saved the planet previously—but he didn't know exactly how familiar or even how in-depth the news they'd gotten had been.

"So you pilot… the arm?" Chad asked, looking just as curious as Patrice.

"Er, yeah, when we're Voltron. It's… hard to explain. There's mind connection stuff, and altean magic, and, yeah, basically."

"Magic?! Really?" Loraine asked excitedly and clapped her hands together.

"Yeah!" Lance grinned down at her. "One of the other paladins, Allura, is an Altean princess and she can use magic. She's like a wizard!"

"Wow!" Loraine was smiling from ear to ear. "Can you do magic?"

"Yeah, can you? Can you?" Teo tagged on.

"Er, I don't think humans can do it."

Both kids looked supremely disappointed.

"Alright, alright!" Chad came forward and herded both kids into his arms. "That's enough. I'm sure Uncle Lance has lots and lots of stuff he can tell you later."

"Oh yeah!" Lance waggled his eyebrows. "I'll tell you about the mermaids next!"

"Mermaids?!" both Loraine and Teo screeched, much to Chad's obvious displeasure.

"We should probably get back to the house," Ray said quietly then. "I think the crowd is getting bigger." Which was true. A lot had gathered down by the shore and were gawking at the lions. But a considerable number were very obviously eavesdropping.

"Oh, yeah, probably a good idea," Lance agreed. Keith's gaze became desperate then, drawing Lance's attention his way for only a second. A second that Lance used to cast him a reassuring smile, before turning back to his parents. "It's cool if Keith stays at the house while we're here, right?"

His mother's face fell into a welcoming smile right away. "Of course."

And so Lance cast Keith a blinding smile, before he finally dropped his hold on him. But he made sure to stay as his side as they headed past the ogling crowd and flashing cameras.

"While you're here?" Patrice asked, walking backward in front of the two. "So… you're not here to stay?"

Leave it to Patrice to bring up a subject Lance hadn't intended to touch until he'd been home at least a few days. Subtlety had never been one of her strong suits, he supposed.

"Ah, well, all the paladins are visiting Earth for about a month," he explained somewhat awkwardly, aware of the way both his parents glanced back at him. "But after that, we have to, you know, head back out. Lots of, er, paladin things to do and… you know. Space. That kind of thing."

Patrice did not look pleased.

"Space, huh?" Ray asked then, always a good one for keeping the conversation going. He and Lance had that in common. "I'll admit, that's not where I thought you'd be until those scary purple guys tried to attack our planet. And even then I was like 'nah, what would space guys need a useless lump like Lance for?'"

"Hey!" Lance glared. "I'm a very important person, you know! I'm a paladin of Voltron! Show some respect!" He held up his hand. "There's only five of us in the whole universe. Makes me pretty special."

"Special huh? That's one way to put it," Ray said immaturely.

Lance growled.

"So you've really met aliens?" Sophie asked then, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she did.

"Oh yeah,  _tons_ ," Lance bragged, ignoring how Keith rolled his eyes beside him. They were headed up a sandy path and had passed through a gate which read "private property." Which would probably stop anyone too curious from following them. Hopefully.

Tall stalks of grass were wavering in the light breeze, the feeling of which almost pulled more sentimental tears from Lance's eyes.

"I have lots of pictures I can show you," he assured. "I took  _a lot_  of selfies."

"I want to meet an alien…" Chad pouted, the two children he held in his arms mimicking his expression.

"I'll introduce you to Allura and Coran sometime," Lance decided, before slinging an arm around Keith's shoulders. "And Keith here is half alien."

" _Lance_!" Keith hissed.

"What?" Lance blinked, honestly surprised at Keith's tone. He'd pretty much gotten over the whole Galra thing, or so Lance had thought. Granted, they didn't go around telling the civilizations they saved that he was Galra, but if they asked, they never lied.

"He looks pretty human to me," Ray said, eyes narrowed as he leaned quite close to Keith. So close that Keith shied away, a more severe blush creeping up from his neck. Which had him nestling more securely into Lance's side. "You from outer space?"

"I said half, you dweeb." Lance shoved Ray lightly back by the shoulder. "He's from Earth. He went to the garrison, same as me."

"Wait a second!" Patrice shouted suddenly, her eyes lighting up with mischief. "Keith, huh? Mullet Keith? That's you?"

Lance stiffened before rather awkwardly pulling away from Keith. "Shut up, Patrice!" he hissed, which only served to confuse Keith more so than he already clearly was.

"Aw, no way!" Ray jumped in. "This is the same Keith you always used to bitch about, isn't?"

"No!"

"Yeah it is! Black hair, scowly face." Patrice nodded knowingly. "Same guy."

"You bitched about me?" Keith asked.

Lance ignored him. "There were lots of Keiths at the Garrison!"

"Wow, how lucky for you!" Patrice reached out and tapped him on the nose. "Got stuck in space with the boy you had a crush on."

"WHAT?!" Lance squawked. "I did not!"

"'God, I hate Keith so much!'" Ray started, doing his stupidest impression of what he thought Lance sounded like. "'He's so great at flying and I wish I could fly like him and be best friends with him and talk about his hair all day long and have sleepovers in his dorm room, but he doesn't even know I exist. God, I hate him and his stupid mullet so much and-'"

"I never said any of that!" Lance objected fiercely, his hands balling into fists at his sides.

"Like you had to," Patrice muttered and rolled her eyes.

"I didn't!" Lance repeated, before turning hastily to Keith. "I never said any of that."

"Uh, okay…"

"No, he only talked about you every chance he got," Chad added.

"Chad!"

"I feel like I know you already," Patrice said, bapping Keith on the nose this time before twirling away with a giggle.

"I hate you all…" Lance pouted. "Why'd I even come back here…?"

"Because!" His father finally stepped in on the conversation, before gesturing ahead of them in a dramatically grand fashion. "You're home!"

A sight that shouldn't have taken Lance's breath away, but did anyway.

The house was practically the same as when he'd last seen it—before he'd gotten on a plane back to the Garrison following summer break. Two stories, chipping white paint. The window on the lower level, far right, was foggy due to poor sealing. The balcony along the front had never been repainted, and so was flaking worse than the house. There was a rocking chair sitting out on the porch where his Grandmother would sit and knit, and there were old, hand-me-down toys littering the sandy yard where his nieces and nephews played.

Just as it'd been when he'd left. Like he'd never left at all, yet…

"Lance?" Keith's voice was soft, barely audible, but it pulled Lance from his shocked reverie. Turning toward him, he pushed a small smile onto his face and ignored the curious way Keith's eyebrows pulled together.

"Yeah," Lance finally said aloud, his voice breathy. "Home."

Walking into the house felt like walking into another dimension. Which Lance should know, since he'd done it. Almost like he was floating—like living a dream. He didn't fear that it wasn't real, it wasn't that. It was just…

It was exactly the same. Faded wallpaper. The dent in the wall from where Ray had pushed him down the stairs. The small, overcrowded kitchen that was littered with hanging utensils since there was no room in the cupboards. The dining room table that was surrounded in too many chairs and always had them sitting elbow to elbow. The living room and it's mismatched, out of date furniture. There was a seam down the largest cushion on the loveseat where Patrice had tried to make a dollhouse and accidentally sliced the fabric instead of her cardboard box. Their mother had sewn it up.

The window behind the loveseat looked out over the backyard. Laundry hung on the lines outside, drying in the salty air. The curtains were dusty and pulled to the sides, never used. The walls were covered in photos, none of the frames matching and a lot of them hung crookedly. The crack in the ceiling from the kitchen to the living room was still there. Chad had told him that bugs would crawl out of it one day and eat him alive, and so for a week, Lance had screamed every time he'd run beneath it.

So many memories. Home.

Home…?

"Lance?" His mother's voice pulled him from his thoughts, her gentle hand resting on his arm. "Are you alright?"

"Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He smiled, trying to put a little bit of strength into his voice and failing. "Just happy to be home."

Which had his mother mimicking his smile despite her concern. "It's Sunday, you know," he started a second later. "That's why everyone's here. We were just sitting down to dinner when we saw the two of you flying over, headed to the beach."

"Oh, awesome!" Lance grounded himself more firmly, pushing his… odd… feelings to the back of his thoughts in favor of salivating over his mother's home cooking. "Keith!" His friend had followed him silently around the house, keeping some distance as Lance had generally forgotten that anyone was there aside from himself. "You're gonna love my mom's food! It's, like, indescribable!"

Keith's soft, barely-there smile was enough to keep Lance in the moment, even though he felt like drifting.

It was summer, and so despite the setting sun, the food was already set up out in the side yard where a large picnic table was littered with the covered food his mother must have been setting out when they're landed. The yard lights were on and pointed into this side of the yard, while paper lanterns were strung up overhead to add extra lighting. All his siblings were there, as well as their spouses, who were just as thrilled Lance was back as the rest of his family. His grandparents too, who shed more tears upon seeing him (Lance was mostly just thankful they were still around. That had been one of his biggest fears in coming back). Only one in-law didn't know him—Ray's wife—but she seemed nice if not a little shy and confused by what was happening. And he had one new niece, only two, from Sophie, and one on the way for Ray's efforts. Patrice had a boyfriend that couldn't make it, but she assured Lance that they'd get along great. And everyone that met Keith was kind, despite how awkward and out of place he clearly felt.

Lance couldn't have imagined it going any better. Yet, somehow, he still felt as though he was  _only_  imagining it.

"Overwhelmed?" His father came up as the children were being rounded up for dinner, his soft gaze looking between both Keith and Lance.

"Uh…" Keith flushed, as if uncertain how to respond.

"A little," Lance admitted, before realizing what he'd said out loud and turning his gaze to his feet.

"It's alright," his father assured. "It's normal. When I… came back from overseas," he looked pointedly at Keith then, "I fought in the South Asian War," he quickly explained, to which Keith nodded in understanding, "coming home was… different."

"Everything is exactly the same as when I left," Lance reasoned, aside from the few additions to the family.

"Maybe." His father shrugged. "But you're not."

Words that Lance wanted to question, but couldn't. His mother called everyone to the table then, her familiar tone causing Lance's heart to jump in his chest.

He put his focus on Keith instead.

"You doing okay?" he asked quietly, as they sat down amongst the loud and clamoring crowd.

"Yeah, of course," Keith replied, before releasing a light chuckle. "I mean, it's not so different than the diplomatic dinners we always had to attend on other planets."

Reasoning that had Lance laughing. "Well, that's one way to look at it."

"Except I actually care if these people like me," Keith added, almost too quietly to hear. He glanced around self-consciously then, before taking a shaky breath.

"They like you," Lance assured, reaching up unconsciously and running his fingers lightly through the back of Keith's long hair—a short-lived gesture he committed only when Keith was extra fidgety, which hardly ever happened. Hence he hardly ever felt it appropriate to do. "You'd know if they didn't."

"I guess that's reassuring," Keith said flatly.

"Lance, pass the bread, please," Sophie asked, as it was directly in front of him. Everyone was loud and giving commands, food being passed every which way as everyone got what they wanted and helped those who couldn't. Lance could tell that Keith tried to assist, but was too quiet—and, frankly, nervous—to know how to include himself. And so Lance asked him every time he got a dish whether it was something he'd be interested in, which basically ended with Keith having the same plate of food that Lance did. But Lance ate a bit of almost everything, so not like Keith was at a great loss as a result.

"Uncle Lance!" Loraine called from the left corner once everyone was settled and had their food. "You guys can't wear gloves at the table! That's dirty!" Because neither he nor Keith had thought to remove the articles.

The statement had Keith turning toward Lance in questioning alarm, while Lance tried to calm the way his heart lurched in his chest.

"Yeah, c'mon, Lance, were you born in a barn or something?" Ray asked, tone deadpan and mocking as he shoved a carrot into his mouth.

"I guess if I was, then you were too," Lance rebuked hotly, hoping his tone didn't betray his discomfort.

Keith, meanwhile, kept watching him, silently asking what he should do. And so despite his hammering unease, Lance silently nodded. Which had Keith frowning, but he removed his worn, fingerless gloves nonetheless. Yet he kept his gaze on Lance as he went to slowly pull off his own, his posture protective in the subtle way Lance was familiar with every time a stranger would over-step their bounds.

"It's okay," Lance murmured to him as he pulled his first leather glove from his right hand and set it aside. Everyone was watching them, as the exchange was out of the ordinary, and Lance supposed there was nothing to do about the silence that gradually fell upon the table.

Taking a silent, but deep, breath, Lance pulled at the fingertips of the glove on his left hand, teeth gritting when the soft, matt white of the synthetic hand beneath slowly revealed itself.

It wasn't as harsh as Shiro's prosthetic. Hadn't been made as a weapon as the Galra had devised for him. Lance's prosthetics were Altean, Olkari, and "Slav" in design. White plates, metal still, but soft in appearance and more refined in details. Shaped to his body and to mimic what he'd looked liked from previous body scans, no one would know he had fake body parts until they saw the body parts themselves. Unlike Shiro, however, Lance had done his best to cover the evidence. Not because he was ashamed, but because he'd somehow drawn more attention than Shiro had. Hunk had reasoned that it was his attitude. Shiro was stoic and intimidating, and so nobody dared question him about his arm. But Lance was open and friendly, and so strangers had felt more at ease bringing it up in conversation, despite the fact that Lance was never interested in talking about what had happened. Hence he'd started wearing gloves all the time.

A few gasps echoed around the table once his glove was fully removed, Lance refusing to meet the eyes of any of his shocked family members. Especially his mother.

Into the silence, Teo squealed and broke the startled shock. "Uncle Lance has a  _robot hand_!"

Robot arm all the way up to his shoulder, actually, but Lance didn't say that out loud.

"Cool!" Loraine screamed after him.

Their interruption, while warring with the mood of the older family members, managed to ease the tension some. But it still left Lance in an awkward position. Did he leave it at the arm, or reveal the truth of everything? He knew he'd have to eventually, but was it better to go slowly, or do it all at once?

His mother had always told him to pull the bandage off quick. It made it less painful that way.

If he did it all at once, he wouldn't have to do it again.

Turning to his niece and nephew, he plastered a wide, devious smile across his lips and waggled his eyebrows. "Wait until you see my legs!" He tried to sound excited, if only because it made the kids more enthusiastic, but was only comforted by the way Keith grabbed his thigh beneath the table and squeezed until it was painful.

Grounded. Stay grounded.

He was  _home_.

At the other end of the table, his father had placed a hand on his mother's trembling shoulder.

Ray cleared his throat then. "Robots, aliens, lion ships. You sure any of this is even real and you're not smoking some potent weed, Lance?"

"I guess that means you'd have to be smoking it too," Lance fired back, jumping at the chance to move on.

"That wouldn't be so surprising," Sophie added, which earned her a glare from Ray.

"Speaking of," Patrice cut in then, leaning forward intently, "you gonna tell us about those mermaids or what?"

Keith stroked his thigh comfortingly under the table, holding him steady.

Lance had never been so happy to talk about mermaids.


	2. Tagalong

Lance's family was huge. Of course, Keith knew that. He'd listened to Lance talk about them over and over and over again. And while it was exciting to meet the people in all of Lance's stories, it was also stretching the limits of what Keith was capable of as far as social interaction. It was one thing to go to a dinner with people they'd saved and talk about things Keith knew from experience how to discuss. Voltron, the war, their progress. These things he could do. But there was a lot more riding on Lance's family for him, personally, and plenty more subjects that were bound to come up.

Lance was in the living room, everyone enraptured with the way he explained their exploits. And while some of it wasn't true, Keith let him go. Let him go until the room got a bit too stifling for him. Standing, he'd quietly left, intent on getting a bit of fresh air. The sliding door in the kitchen was open, allowing the breeze to blow in the night air and wipe at the light layer of sweat that coated Keith's forehead.

No air-conditioning. Not that he wasn't familiar with such things. He'd lived in the desert once, after all.

Pulling the ponytail from his hair that was holding it half up, Keith folded his hair into a messy bun before tying it back again, the chill that then assaulted the back of his neck feeling like a cool balm.

There were dishes stacked up beside the sink. Never comfortable unless he had something to do, Keith headed over, located a sponge and the dish soap, and started to wash. He listened to the voices in the other room, thankful to be close enough to hear as well as far enough to catch his breath.

He was three plates in when he registered a presence coming up behind him. No need to be alarmed here, however. No need for his hair to stand on end.

He wasn't in his armor. He wasn't in space.

This was Lance's  _home_.

"You don't have to do that, honey." The soft voice of Lance's mother. She was beside him a second later, a dry towel in her hand as she reached into the other side of the double sink and retrieved one of the plates Keith had already scrubbed clean.

"Oh, uh, I just…" He didn't know what to say.

"But thank you," she continued, Keith looking up to see that she had the same soft smile Lance did, when Lance was sharing one of those private moments between the two of them that Keith practically lived for.

He swallowed. "Sure."

He kept washing, both of them silent as they worked through the dishes together. But Keith could tell there were words wanting to be spoken, and they weren't coming from his side. Yet he didn't know how to go about asking, so he stayed quiet and hoped Lance's mother would be like her son and lead the conversation.

"Would you mind," she eventually started, "if I asked you something?"

Keith hummed. "Depends on what it is, I guess," he answered honestly. He wasn't defensive, but there were certain things Lance's family didn't have any business knowing.

"About Lance," she clarified.

Keith only hummed again. He had a vague idea of where this was going.

"About- About what happened…"

Keith scrubbed a little harder at the bowl in his hand. "I wasn't actually there," he clarified. "One of the other paladins, Hunk, saw it, but I was away with another faction of the resistance at the time." It'd happened during his time serving with the Blade of Marmora. Before the virus had been discovered in Shiro's arm and before he'd ended up back in the black lion.

It was because of Lance's accident that he'd come back. The wall that had collapsed and crushed him had been hot enough from the explosion that it had poorly cauterized where it'd sliced through Lance's limbs. It was what had allowed Hunk enough time to get him back to the castle and into a cryopod.

But they couldn't remake what had been lost and though he'd survived the initial injury, none of them had been sure that he'd make it, not with the severity of what had happened. The shock to his body might yet have killed him.

They called Keith through the BOM and explained what had happened. That they needed him to come back. Allura, being ever-diplomatic despite the roughness of her grief-stricken tone, had explained that if Lance didn't make it, they'd need a red paladin. That even if he did, his recovery would be long and hard.

Which had only made Keith feel worse, truth be told. His heart had broken that day, shattered by what had happened to Lance and stricken with grief because had hadn't been there to stop it.

Hunk had stepped forward then and said what Keith had really needed to hear, even if he hadn't known it. Sure, they might need Keith for the red lion, but he needed to come back, first and foremost, for Lance. When he woke up—because Hunk had been certain he'd make it—he was going to be really messed up. And when a family member was that desperate, they all needed to be there to help them get through it.

He'd said that Lance would need Keith. He'd need them all.

So Keith had gone home.

It's been shocking, walking into the infirmary and seeing Lance there. He'd been removed from the cryopod by then and was being kept unconscious on one of the beds.

_"It's bad, Keith," Shiro said as they headed through the doors. "Just… be ready."_

_He told himself he was, but when he finally saw Lance, he knew there was no way he could have ever been prepared._

Three limbs gone as if they'd never been. His left arm all the way up to the shoulder. His left leg was cut away mid-thigh. And his right leg just below the knee. The sight had nauseated Keith, and he hadn't even been able to see the physical scars left behind, since Lance had been encased in a cryosuit.

Everyone else had been there as well, as they'd been preparing to bring Lance back to consciousness.

_Standing beside Shiro, Keith leaned over the gurney, watching intently as Lance's eyes began to shift beneath the lids. Most everyone was doing the same, their breaths held in tense, gut-wrenching anticipation._

_Slowly, Lance's lashes fluttered, eyes rolling forward as he blinked. Blearily, he looked at them all before a small smile creased his unusually chapped lips._

_"We havin' a party?" he asked, continuing to blink as he tried to focus. "Cuz, personally, I feel a little like I've already partied a bit too much, if you know what I mean."_

_Allura smiled warmly at him, drawing his gaze her way immediately._

_"I'm going to raise the bed up a little, alright?" she said, before pressing the button that angled Lance's upper body a bit more into the sitting position._

_"In a bed, huh?" he asked, swallowing dryly. "Guess this isn't the kind of party I'd want to be invited to then. What'd I do this time to end up in one of these cryosuits?"_

_He was clearly still recovering from the drugs, but that didn't stop him from looking for answers between the rest of his friends. Which was when his eyes found Keith._

_They widened a bit, before his brows pulled slightly together in alarm. "Even Mullet's here? Wow, I must have really fucked up."_

_Keith cringed uncomfortably._

_"Lance…" Shiro said gently. He was hooked up to a few monitoring machines and they could all tell that his heartrate had increased, that his breathing was coming faster._

_"I get the feeling from everyone's faces that there's bad news," Lance said then, voice a little higher, "so why don't you just…"_

The way his shoulder had moved had made it clear to Keith that he'd attempted to make some flippant gesture, as Lance was prone to, and he'd nearly gotten sick when the effort had failed. Lance's gaze had flicked quickly to his shoulder then, his heartrate skyrocketing when he'd finally realized what wasn't there.

_"Lance, stay calm," Coran advised._

_But it was too late. Lance's eyes stayed trained on the empty space where his arm should have been for some time, before he finally seemed to realize that whatever strange feeling he registered there was present in other places. His gaze flicked to his legs, at which point his heartrate rushed forward and his breathing began to come in short, panicked bursts._

_"Lance, you need to breathe," Allura tried to reason, but her words fell on deaf ears._

They'd put him back under a few panicked moments later, afraid the shock would do more damage. Hunk had collapsed in a chair and sobbed. Pidge had cried silently at the end of bed. Shiro, his own prosthetic hand folding into a fist, had walked swiftly from the room. Allura and Coran had distracted themselves with monitoring Lance's condition despite the tears that had rolled down their cheeks.

And Keith, pale with the silence blaring in his ears, had stayed by the side of the bed, just watching as Lance's unusually pallid face had fallen into unconsciousness once again.

"It happened about three and half years ago, I guess," Keith continued to explain.

"Keith…" Lance's mother pulled his gaze to her own, her eyes desperate. They were the same blue as Lance's, which made Keith's chest tighten.

He turned back toward the dishes. "You don't want to know the details, ma'am," he muttered, not knowing what else to call her. "They were on a galra ship. A wall collapsed. Lance couldn't get out of the way." That was the cleanest way Keith knew how to say it. "That's it."

It wasn't it, but Keith didn't want to expand any more. It wasn't his place to, for one, but for two, Lance rarely talked to anyone about what had happened. Though he'd been too drugged up when he'd first come back to them to remember, Keith knew that he did. Knew that he remembered being shot in the leg, that he remembered trying to crawl away as the wall had collapsed. That he remembered screaming until he'd gone unconscious. That he remembered what it felt like to be crushed.

These were details Lance had only ever shared with Keith. No one else. And so no else needed to know.

Beside him, Lance's mother turned back toward the sink, the back of her hand against her lips as she trembled. Keith watched it out of the corners of his eyes, uncertain what to do or say. What comfort was there, really? When Lance was shaking and upset, he didn't tell him lies. He didn't tell him it would all be okay. They'd all, team Voltron, lived through the traumas the war had brought on them and they all knew that things would never be okay again.

But this was Lance's mother. He was on Earth.

Abruptly, he felt as though he shouldn't be there at all.

"Thank you," she finally said as she turned back toward Keith. She took a deep breath, clearly composing herself, before she smiled again. "Thank you for telling me."

"Uh, sure…"

She reached out then and placed her hand on his arm, squeezing lightly. Before she returned her attention to the dishes. They continued washing in silence, Keith trying not to think too hard on what they'd talked about.

Like Lance, he didn't enjoy thinking much about it.

"Got you out here working, huh?" Both Keith and his mother turned, surprised at the sound of Lance's voice. Oddly enough, Lance was one of the few people that could sneak up behind Keith without him even knowing they were coming. Who knew Lance would take so well to the stealth training the BOM had eventually put them all through.

"I volunteered," Keith replied easily, drying his hands on the towel Lance's mother had handed him. They'd just finished.

"Well, that will definitely get you brownie points," Lance smarmed. "Not every day someone volunteers to do the dishes around here."

"I can't remember a single time you did," his mother said quickly.

"Ouch, harsh."

"He never volunteered to do the dishes on the ship either," Keith added. "And all he had to do was dump them down the wash shoot." Leaning back, Keith crossed his arms over his chest and raised a teasing eyebrow in Lance's direction.

"Could you not give me a bad rep in front of my family?"

"Oh, honey," reaching out, Lance's mother took her son by the cheeks before pulling him down so she could place a gentle kiss on his nose, "we already know full-well the kind of reputation you have for chores. There's no harm in Keith telling the truth."

Which had Lance huffing in defeat while Keith offered up a small, half-smile of amusement.

Lance rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Ma."

Taking a step back, she placed her hands on her hips.

"Everyone's heading out or to bed," Lance started then, as if that was why he'd come to find them in the first place.

"Hmm, it has gotten rather late, hasn't it." Nodding, his mother cast a smile between them. "I assume you're both staying here?"

"Of course," Lance agreed with a grin.

Continuing to smile, she nodded before heading back toward the living room. Which left Keith victim to the curious stare Lance threw his way.

"What?" he asked.

"You and my mom? What were you talking about?"

"Paranoid?"

Lance frowned.

"Don't worry about it," Keith assured. "Nothing important."

Lance didn't appear convinced, but he gave in nonetheless. Coming closer, he only stopped once the space between them had been cut down to a few inches, Keith doing his best not to release the startled gasp that wanted to escape his throat.

Reaching out, Lance slipped a strand of Keith's hair behind his ear, the fingertips of his prosthetic feeling familiar despite the few times Lance had ever done such a thing. Keeping his gaze trained on Lance's, Keith steadied his breathing as Lance then lightly slid his hand over his hair before gently pulling loose the hair tie that held it in the messy bun. Keith's hair, which stretched nearly to his elbows, fell down around his shoulders while Lance slipped the hair tie around his own wrist.

The sensation of his touch dragging faintly over the back of Keith's neck sent all the blood in his body abuzz, Keith swallowing hard as all his hair was pulled to one side and over his right shoulder.

"I'm glad you grew your hair out," Lance murmured softly.

"I know," Keith whispered back. "You've told me."

Lance smiled. "I like long hair, sue me."

Keith could think of a lot of other things he'd rather do to him.

"Are you two gonna stand out here and ignore us the whole time everyone is leaving or what?" Patrice called then, before popping her head around the corner with a glare. Huffing, Lance shook his head, but there was a soft smile on his lips as his hand fell from Keith's shoulder.

Turning, he glared at his sister. "I was just getting Keith and Ma! You don't have to sound so catty!"

"Yeah, sure." She waved flippantly before vanishing back around the corner.

Lance huffed.

"They're just happy you're back," Keith reasoned, which had Lance looking back his way.

"Oh I know. But that doesn't mean I have to let them get away with teasing me. I'm an important person now." Lance slapped his hand over his chest. "They should respect me a little more."

"Don't they?"

"I'm the youngest," Lance deadpanned. "Of course they don't."

Keith chuckled. "Well, they're probably all waiting to say goodnight."

"Probably. Can't keep em' waiting." Winking, Lance turned on his heel to head out, only to be stopped when Keith stepped forward and grabbed his arm.

Gazes meeting once again, Lance raised a question brow, which had Keith replying with a flat look.

"Lance…" he said darkly.

"Hm?" His hum was far too innocent.

Keith held out his free hand.

"Oh  _fine_ ," Lance whined, before snapping the hair tie off his wrist and dropping it into Keith's waiting palm. Which earned him his freedom. "You really should wear it down more often."

"It's inconvenient," Keith reasoned, shoving his hair back into a bun as he trailed Lance back into the living room.

"'It's inconvenient,'" Lance mocked.

Keith didn't even bother wasting an eye roll on him.

His whole family was waiting as they entered. Keith stood back as they shared in a few more laughs and farewells. No one seemed to want to leave, but doing so was apparently an inevitability. Eventually everyone was filing back into the kitchen and then out the door, until the only ones left behind were Lance's parents and grandparents, as well as Patrice. She'd apparently moved back in with her parents at some point, though Keith hadn't been able to put together the details.

"I still can't believe you're back," his mother was saying as she grabbed Lance by the cheeks yet again, tears once more glistening in her eyes. "You're  _home_."

Keith silently watched the quiet exchanges, a small smile on his lips. He wasn't envious—he had his family and he was content with his position by that point. He was just happy for Lance, because he knew how much he'd been longing for this. And, frankly, if Lance was happy, then Keith was happy.

It really was that simple.

"Your old room is the same as you left it," his mother explained once they were all preparing to turn in.

"Well, that'll probably be embarrassing," Lance joked, which earned him a few laughs.

"And Keith, we have plenty of extra rooms," his mother went on then. "With only Patrice living here, there are two unoccupied."

Keith opened his mouth to thank her, but Lance cut in before he could.

"He can stay in my room, Ma," he said. "I gotta look through all my old clothes for him, since we don't have any really, and it's got the private bathroom and stuff. Besides, we're used to living in close quarters."

It sounded like a series of cascading excuses, which left Keith unknowing how to interject.

They hadn't discussed clothes, although a private bathroom would be nice. And, well, he and Lance  _were_  used to living in close quarters, that was true. Aside from being stuck in the castle the last five years with each other near-constantly, there had been a long duration of time where the two of them had practically lived in the same room with one another.

Plus, there were other… advantages, Keith supposed. Well, advantages that were mostly fantastical. But Keith had long since trained himself to ignore such thoughts.

"Oh… alright," his mother replied, eyebrows curious. She looked between them, but didn't add anything else to the subject. Which Keith supposed was a good thing. He knew that sometimes he and Lance came across… a certain way. But the truth was that they weren't that way  _at all_. It was just… what the war had done to them. Or something.

Keith didn't like to think too hard on it. Like he didn't with most things. Just added complications.

Another round of goodnights were had all around and they probably lasted longer than what would have been normal given a more typical situation. Keith even got a hug from Lance's father and a kiss on the cheek from his mother.

He was soon following Lance up the stairs and down a dimly lit hallway to a room at the end. Upon reaching the door, Lance turned to him and held up a warning finger.

"This is the room of seventeen-year-old me," he said quite seriously. "I can't remember exactly what it looks like, but it is not a reflection of the man I am today."

"Should I be worried?" Keith asked skeptically, though with a humored grin.

Frowning, Lance hummed under his breath and quickly glared, before turning and pushing his way into the room. Curious despite himself, Keith followed closely behind, eyes scouring the bedroom as soon as the light was flicked on.

It wasn't terribly large, but none of the rooms in the house really were despite the size of the family that had once lived there. The walls were a dark blue and the carpet worn brown. There was a bed in the corner with a horribly gaudy orange comforter. At the end of it was a desk stacked with old textbooks, what looked like a broken lamp, and a half a dozen tiny cactuses that were seemingly still alive (perhaps Lance's mother took care of them). There was a large window taking up a good chunk of the back wall, the drapes that hung on either side themed with constellations. In the other corner, beside the the closet doors, was an old, kid-friendly telescope with a pair of tattered ice-skates underneath. There was a dresser on the other side of the door, the top of which was also covered in tiny cactuses. There was an empty fishbowl in the middle of them.

The ceiling was covered in plastic, glow-in-the-dark stars, and what little wall-space existed was either covered in photographs of Lance with his family and friends, or posters relating to the Garrison.

Except for one poster, above the dresser, which was an enlarged photo of one Takashi Shirogane.

Keith couldn't help sputtering out a laugh when he saw it.

"Ugh, I totally forgot about that thing," Lance muttered, hands shoved defensively into his pockets as he stared up at Shiro's cadet photo, the quality of which was rather poor, blown up as it was. "It was a joke gift from Hunk after my first year at the Garrison."

"And you hung it above your dresser?" Keith asked, pulling his phone from his pocket as he did.

"Shiro was my hero, okay?! I wanted to be just like him when I was a teenager."

Unable to help himself, Keith snapped a picture of the poster and opened up his chat window with Shiro, despite how Lance stammered and reached out to stop him.

"Too late," Keith said as he stepped out of Lance's reach, hitting the send button on his phone at the same time.  _Found this hanging in Lance's bedroom_ , he typed out afterward, ignoring how Lance groaned and covered his face with his hands.

"I should have made you stay in one of the extra rooms," Lance lamented.

"Sealed your own doom," Keith agreed, watching as the ellipses beneath his text turned into words. "Shiro says he's flattered, but in a very committed relationship with Allura. He suggests you work on overcoming your obsession with him as it's starting to become so obvious that everyone else might notice."

"Oh my god, you're both the worst."

Keith didn't mention the next few texts that came in, which were Shiro inquiring as to why Keith was in Lance's room in the first place. Instead, he chose to ignore them completely.

" _Anyway_ ," Lance huffed, "the bathroom is over there," he gestured to the door to the right of the closet, "and while most of my clothes are probably too small for me, you should fit into them alright. Just probably not the skinny jeans, what with your thighs of steel."

"How did you end up in the room with the private bathroom?" Keith asked. He may not have a family of his own, but he knew full-well that siblings of the younger variety didn't usually get the good rooms.

"This used to be Chad's room," Lance explained, "but after he moved out for college, I snuck all my stuff in overnight, because Patrice was planning to do the same thing the next day. It's been mine ever since."

"And the tiny plants?"

"Oh, yeah, those were Chad's too." Lance shrugged. "But I kept em' alive because, I mean, why not. They also made good ornaments in my dorm room, since the Garrison was in serious need of some interior decorating help." He stared at a few of the cactuses on the dresser curiously. "These ones were in my dorm room when we left." He pointed out a few of them. "Must be the Garrison gave all my stuff back to my parents."

"Probably." Keith poked at the spines on one of the larger plants. "I like cactuses."

Lance chuckled. "You would."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You and cactuses have a lot in common."

Keith crossed his arms over his chest. "How so?" he asked flatly.

A grin spread across Lance's lips as he reached out and patted Keith's cheek. "You're both cute!" His smile then fell into an exaggerated frown. "But also prickly."

Batting Lance's hand away, it was Keith's turn to glare. Truth be told, however, he never knew how to respond when Lance said things like that. "Cute." It wasn't the first time Lance has said such to him. But Lance also said such things to everyone. Pidge was adorable, Allura was stunning, Shiro was the "handsomest man in the universe" and Lance was jealous. Hunk was a cuddly, gorgeous piece of man-bear that Lance loved to hug. He hadn't always been so open with the compliments, but as the years had gone on, he'd become more and more prone to just… blurt out whatever compliments happened to pop into his head. Which no one seemed to mind since he'd long since stopped hitting on Allura. It was more akin to Lance's strange way of being honest. He wasn't blunt the way that Keith was, but he still had his way of saying silly things that somehow meant so much to other people.

Keith wasn't sure if he loved or hated him for it.

"Okay, so!" Lance clapped his hands together. "Let's see what younger me has to offer as far as wardrobe." He pulled the closet doors open dramatically, before beginning to rummage around. "Is it weird that I feel like I'm going through a stranger's closet?"

"It's been over five years."

"Yeah. I guess five years doesn't sound like a lot, until you really realize how…"

"How much you've changed?"

"Maybe…" Lance's shoulders sagged some, which caused Keith to frown. "Is it weird that I feel… I mean, I know I'm 'home,' but it- it doesn't feel like… It doesn't feel the same."

Keith didn't immediately respond. He didn't know what to say, really. The one home he'd ever really found for himself was the castle, and while it hadn't always been his home, going back to it never felt strange.

"I mean, I'm thrilled to be here," Lance went on, still facing the closet, which didn't allow Keith a view of his expression. "I'm so glad to be back. But… it's not what I expected it to be, I guess."

"I don't…" Keith stepped forward, before placing a gentle hand on Lance's arm. "Maybe it's just because you've been away so long? I'm sure everyone in your family is feeling a little weird right now too." What else could he say? He honestly had no idea how to relate to what Lance was talking about. Which wasn't really out of the ordinary when it came to subjects like this, but it always made Keith feel bad that he didn't have the right words.

He felt like he never had the right words…

"Yeah…" Lance took a deep breath, before seeming to shake himself of his downed mood. "Yeah, you're probably right. So! Do you want my Garrison robe?" he pulled the gray article out and held it up, "or the pink one Patrice got me for my fifteenth birthday? It comes with complimentary unicorn slippers." He held up the second one as well.

"Uh…" Keith shied away a bit. "I think I'll just go without, thanks."

"Your loss." Lance shrugged, before tossing the pink over his arm and returning the gray one to the closet.

"Do you have a shower in there?" Keith asked a second later, gesturing toward the bathroom.

"Oh, yeah, of course. Tired of feeling all salty, eh?"

"It's a bit uncomfortable, yeah."

"Go on. I'll go get some towels and stuff from downstairs. And I'll get you some clothes too—not pink with unicorns, I promise."

Not that Keith was honestly worried.

The bathroom wasn't anything special. Narrow and long, it had a sink with a small counter on the left, which was covered in dusty bottles of what must have once been part of Lance's grooming routine. Then the toilet and at the end a tub with a blue shower curtain. Leaving the door open—because the room didn't appear to be vented—Keith pulled the curtain aside before taking a second to figure out the knobs. Lance returned while the water was running—warming up—and caught Keith in the middle of pulling his t-shirt over his head.

"A towel," he explained as he handed it over. "Soap, shampoo,  _conditioner_ —use it  _please_."

"Thanks." Keith set the towel on the toilet seat and placed everything else on the edge of the tub.

"Oh, and this." Squeezing past him, Lance leaned over the tub and flipped the knobs Keith had turned. "Hot is cold and cold is hot."

Well that explained why it was taking so long for the water to warm up.

"And don't take all the hot water," Lance added, poking Keith in the chest. "I need a shower too."

"No promises." Keith shrugged noncommittally and began to undo his belt.

Sighing, Lance marched from the room and, just beyond the door, began to rummage through his dresser.

Keith didn't pay him any mind. Both he and Lance had lost any sense of modesty around one another years ago. After Lance's accident and before they'd been able to get him proper prosthetics, someone had had to look after him. Somehow, it'd fallen to Keith. Team Voltron hadn't been able to simply come to a stop in their efforts because one of them was injured, and since Red hadn't initially wanted Keith back—despite Allura's plan—that'd left him with the time needed to dedicate to Lance.

Part of the reason Red hadn't wanted him back might have been because Keith hadn't  _wanted_  to be "back" in the first place, not as the circumstances had been, but that was a different subject.

Lance had been… It'd been bad when he'd first begun his recovery. For weeks, he'd barely eaten. Hadn't talked at all, hadn't done… anything. Hadn't been  _able_  to do anything, really. Keith had forced him to eat, forced him around the castle in his levichair, taken him to the bathroom, bathed him. All Lance had done was sit there, eyes empty, seeming to slip further and further away all the time.

Then there'd been the time that…

It didn't matter. Afterwards, Keith had never allowed him to be alone. He'd stayed with Lance twenty-four seven. He'd been so paranoid that he hadn't even allowed himself a few minutes to take care of himself. Instead, he'd carted Lance with him everywhere. They'd slept in the same bed. When he'd showered Lance, he'd washed himself at the same time. Maybe it sounded strange, but Lance had basically been… He'd basically been a ghost. Or maybe the opposite—a body without a ghost.

And the one time Keith had walked away for a few minutes, he'd almost slipped away entirely.

So he'd clung to Lance desperately, too scared to do anything else. Too afraid of losing him. Those first weeks had been… terrible. Lance had been stuck in his own head and Keith hadn't known how to pull him back to the surface. He didn't know how many nights he'd lain beside him, hand clutching Lance's arm while his heart raced, beating so hard and loud that it'd felt like his whole body might explode.

He'd cried a lot too, so stressed and so uncertain. Afraid to sleep because he'd been terrified to wake up and find Lance gone.

Just thinking about it had his heart beating faster, the anxiety returning like a tagalong to the memory.

Shaking his head, Keith continued to remove his pants. The point was that both he and Lance were familiar enough with each other that the idea of being naked while the other was in the room was hardly worth worrying about. Keith knew every bend and curve to Lance's body. He knew every scar and every mole. He knew the way Lance's ribs stuck out when he was far, far too thin and he knew the pattern of his spine beneath his skin. He knew the shape of his skull beneath his fingers and slope of his shoulders under his palms. And while Lance might not know these acutely intimate details about him, Keith had never found modesty to be a good idea when Lance hadn't been afforded the luxury. He hadn't cared about Lance seeing him undressed, especially if it'd brought Lance any kind of comfort, not being the only one so wholly exposed.

At the time, Keith's feelings for Lance—which he'd had since before the accident—hadn't been anywhere near his radar. He knew Lance's body nearly as well as his own, but there was nothing sensual or sexy about it. Keith didn't look back on those memories when he needed to get some release. He was more likely to be nauseated than anything else, recalling how helpless Lance had been. How frustrated and upset and broken he'd been, once he'd begun to return to himself. How embarrassed he'd been that Keith had had to take care of him.

Not all the memories were bad, but they weren't anywhere near being… attractive. Even if Keith had somehow been grounded enough back then to consider romantic feelings, neither he nor Lance had been in any place emotionally to handle such things. Especially Lance.

Climbing into the bathtub, Keith pulled the shower curtain shut and closed his eyes, allowing the warm water to cascade down his body until he was soaked.

Things were different now, though. Had been for a while. Despite the closeness between himself and Lance, Keith's nerves and fears were still there, raising their ugly heads whenever Lance touched him or whispered in his ear or gave him one of his stupid, flirty compliments. They were close, Keith knew that. Such a consequence had seemed inevitable given how Keith had cared for him, and neither of them had seemed intent on walking away from that once it'd no longer been needed. They didn't sleep in the same room anymore, or bathe together, or anything like that, but Lance was Keith's best friend. And even though Lance always claimed that Hunk was his "very bestest bro," he'd murmured to Keith so many times when they'd been alone that Keith was his best friend. Was his closest.

His tone had always been soft, like he'd been telling Keith a secret. Like his words had meant something besides what he'd said. As if Keith being his best friend had somehow been in a different category than their other friends. Which was both exciting and terrifying for Keith. He knew what he had with Lance was special. Was… different. But neither of them had defined what that meant. Keith hadn't wanted to. Being with Lance as they were had come naturally. Keith hadn't initiated it—he hadn't done anything aside from what he'd felt he had to. Exploring whatever had developed between them would require talking and… questions and… and things that Keith was too scared to pose.

So long as he and Lance had what they did, he was content. If that was all Lance wanted, then he could live with that. It was still more, still intimate.

Mostly, he feared that someday Lance would find someone else who'd know him as well as Keith did. That someday, there'd be someone else that would know about the birthmark on the inside of his right thigh. That they'd know he had a scar behind his ear that no one could actually see and that there were three freckles on his right underarm that formed a seemingly perfect triangle.

Keith feared this every day, deep, deep down in his very bones. That someone else out there was worthy of the soft way Lance murmured when he was telling Keith something no one else knew, or deserved his light, tender touches when neither of them thought anyone else was looking. More than anything, Keith and Lance were… They were private. Very, very private, especially after everything that had happened. And Keith wanted that privacy all to himself.

He didn't want anyone else to possess such things with Lance the way he did.

"I left you clothes on the bed." Lance's voice jolted Keith from his thoughts. He was likely only just outside the shower curtain. "And I meant it when I said don't use all the hot water…"

Keith could tell just from his tone that he was pouting.

"I'm almost done," he lied, before finally reaching for the shampoo.

"'Kay. You can just leave the water running. I'll jump in after you."

Finishing up as quickly as he could, Keith turned the water as hot as it would go before slipping back out into the bathroom. He knew Lance liked the water basically boiling. He, on the other hand, didn't understand how Lance could stand it. Scalding water was not his idea of a good shower experience.

Lance wasn't anywhere in sight as Keith quickly began to towel himself dry. His hair took the longest and he had to wring it out for some minutes before it'd finally stop dripping water all down his body. Standing before the mirror, he rubbed his hair dry one last time before setting the towel aside. Staring at himself in the mirror and the rats nest atop his head, he growled before beginning to comb through it with his fingers.

"Here." Lance walked up beside him and pulled open the cabinet behind the mirror. He held a brush up to Keith a second later, who took it gratefully.

Before he could make use of it, however, Lance was sliding up behind him. As shirtless as Keith was naked, he reached his arm around until he could brush his hand up across Keith's forehead. Pulling his bangs back out of his face, Lance stroked the hair gently down atop Keith's head, before leaning in and placing his nose against the back of Keith's head.

"You smell nice," was all he said, pausing for a second longer to apparently smell Keith's hair before he was slipping away. Despite how his bangs fell back in front of his eyes, Keith turned just enough to watch Lance as he stripped off his pants and boxers before jumping into the shower.

Flicking his attention back to his reflection, Keith stared at himself for a few moments, thoughts dumb and empty, before he sighed, blushed, and started to viciously brush his hair.

Beside him, Lance hummed and occasionally spoke a few lyrics when he happened to remember them.

Lance was still in the shower by the time Keith had braided his hair over one shoulder and retreated back to the bedroom. Gaze drawn to the bed, he spotted where Lance had left out a pair of gray sweatpants and a navy sweatshirt, as well as a pair of black boxers. Keith slipped them all on quickly, a shiver already beginning to spring across his skin despite the relatively warm temperature.

Keith was always cold. It was part of the reason he tried to stay as active as possible.

Sitting down on the bed, he scooted back until he could crisscross his legs beneath him. The mattress was soft—much softer than anything they were used to on the ship—and Keith felt rather unbalanced as he sank into the sheets.

He entertained himself for some minutes with just looking around Lance's room, noticing a few other things that hadn't drawn his attention initially. There was an old, half destroyed planetary display in the corner behind the telescope. The bottom half of what looked like a rubber duck was visible beneath the dresser. And underneath his desk chair were the infamous unicorn slippers he had previously mentioned.

"You're not snooping?" Lance asked as he walked in from the bathroom, as naked as Keith had been while he rubbed furiously at his short hair. "I'm honestly kind of insulted."

"What would I have to snoop around for?" Keith asked, allowing himself only one quick look at Lance before he ripped his gaze to the window instead. "You have something to hide?"

"Heh, nah." Lance yanked open the top drawer of his dresser. "You know all the important stuff already."

"You say that like you have so many important secrets."

"Hey, I do!" Lance had a pair of boxers in his hand as he turned to point an accusing finger in Keith's direction. "I'm very mysterious."

One eyebrow raised, Keith lazily looked back at him. "You're about as mysterious as I am tactful. Let's not lie to ourselves."

Lance was pouting again. "I could be mysterious. I'm super mysterious. I'm just  _so_  mysterious that you don't even know it."

"Uh huh."

"I'm so mysterious that you're  _jealous_  of how mysterious I am. And you don't even know it. That's how mysterious I am."

"Me? Jealous? I think you're getting me confused with yourself."

Lance gaped, still quite naked. But Keith supposed that if he was just going to stand there like that, there was no point in  _not_  looking.

Even if he had to willfully temper the burning in his blood.

Once upon a time, Lance had been a beanpole. And while he was still tall and rather narrow—especially through the hips—he sported a kind of wiry muscle that had been toned over years of use and training. Especially in his shoulders. Lance had  _great_  shoulders. Very broad. And while some might be taken aback by the amount of Lance that was prosthetic, Keith hardly noticed. Not like his robotic limbs held him back in any way or took away from his attractiveness. They were made from models and scans of his original appendages, and so attached seamlessly into place along the seams of his brown skin, smooth in the same way Shiro's arm was and advanced enough that each toe and finger reacted to mere twitches moving through Lance's body.

But even if Lance's prosthetics weren't so well-made, or even if he had none, Keith would still…

He'd taken care of Lance at his very lowest. Doing so hadn't changed anything in the way Keith felt about him.

"There are plenty of things about me that you're  _totally_  jealous of," Lance determined.

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

Lance sputtered, seemingly scrambling for something to say. "I'm a  _much_  better shot than you," he finally said. "Aaaaaand I'm taller than you. And…"

"And…?"

"And…" A devious glint slid into Lance's gaze, which was followed quickly by a knowing little grin. "My dick's bigger than yours."

Keith scoffed, unable to stop his eyes from dropping lower across Lance's body. Not that he needed a visual—he knew enough of the evidence to make a determination. Which meant that, yes, he also knew that what Lance said was, in fact, true. But only because Lance was fucking hung and so had a very unfair advantage.

Not that Keith  _really_  needed to be thinking about such things.

"A more accurate representation of your personality, I guess," Keith settled for saying, before mentally congratulating himself. It wasn't very often he got in a zinger like that. Usually his wit was too slow for the moment.

"Um, fucking  _rude_ ," Lance countered, before  _finally_  yanking on his boxers.

Keith wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed.

Lance mumbled grumpily to himself for a few moments then, slipping on his pink robe while Keith pretended not to listen to him. He eventually made his way over to the bed and flopped down on his back. Legs dangling over the edge, he placed his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. Keith watched him, gaze dragging across Lance's bare chest inside his open robe.

The coals in the base of his stomach simmered and he decided to look away again.

"Can you do me a favor?" Lance eventually asked, eyes still contentedly closed.

Keith didn't hesitate in the least before answering. "Sure."

"I've been kind of putting it off, but Slav is going to have a fit the next time I see him if I don't clean these things." He kicked the back of his legs against the bed. "You know, clean them properly and stuff."

Keith looked down at him. "I'll help." He'd helped Lance clean his prosthetics plenty of times, mostly because it was a long process and Lance was pretty stranded once he had the legs removed. But Lance asked him every time, so Keith supposed he could agree to do it every time, if it made Lance feel better.

He knew the subject was sometimes sensitive, at least with other people. Sometimes he felt like it was a weird sort of test, like Lance was… waiting for him to refuse. Which he never would, but that probably wasn't the point that Keith was missing.

"Sweet." Lance finally opened his eyes again and stared up at the ceiling. "I'll have to brace my family for it though, won't I?"

"We could just do it up here."

"And spend the whole day up here while we wait for that shitty paste stuff to set? That'd probably draw more attention than if I just did it out in the open." There was a long process that went along with keeping Lance's prosthetics is tip-top condition, most of which involved waiting hours while certain products were left to sit and do whatever it was they did. Which was why Lance usually did both legs at the same time, otherwise he'd have to do it over a two day period instead of one.

"There's always the lions too," Keith supplied, which earned him a thoughtful frown. "Lance?"

"Is it… Is it wrong that I kind of just… want to be able to do it here?" he asked. "Like, do it and not feel weird about it? I don't want to hide…"

"No." Keith shrugged. "But it probably will be weird, at least for a little while. It's your family though, and they don't seem like the kind of people that would, like, have a problem with it?"

"No, they're not." Lance sat up and finally turned toward Keith. "I guess I just don't want to feel like I'm drawing undo attention or something."

"Doing what you have to do to take care of yourself isn't 'drawing undo attention,'" Keith said simply. "Besides, the sooner you do it, the sooner you don't have to worry about it anymore, right?" He only had to "clean" his prosthetics once every few months.

Lance sighed. "I guess you're right."

Yet, somehow, he didn't seem wholly convinced, which twisted Keith's stomach anxiously. "And hey," he started, the two of them sitting close enough together that Keith could lean over and bump his shoulder into Lance's, "I'll be with you."

Lance smiled softly. "Yeah. You always are, huh."

"You basically forced me to come with you, remember?"

"I didn't mean it like a bad thing."

Which caused Keith pause. He'd been trying to talk smack, because that was what they did, but occasionally Lance didn't give into it. Sometimes, he stayed serious, and Keith never quite knew what to say when he did. All he really knew was that these moments caused his heart to hiccup in his chest, which was both a nice feeling as well as exceedingly uncomfortable.

Sighing, it was Lance's turn to lean over. Placing his forehead gently on Keith's shoulder, he took a shaky breath—which caused Keith to frown further. Tilting his own head to the side until he could rest it atop Lance's, Keith then curled his arm forward and up, until he could brush his fingers gently through the hair around the edge of Lance's ear.

"Thank you," Lance murmured and reached out to wrap his arms around Keith's waist. "For coming with me." He tugged Keith closer, until his crossed leg was overlapping Lance's now extended thigh. "I didn't realize how nervous I was until you agreed to come too. It was like this huge weight was lifted from my shoulders."

Keith smiled. "I'm glad you asked me to come. Being up there alone was going to be… It was gonna suck."

"Says the guy who likes to be alone more than half the time."

"Well… I guess it was going to suck not having you around, then." Because even when Keith wanted to be alone, he didn't mind when Lance showed up. Despite how notorious he was for being overtly annoying as well as distracting.

Chuckling, Lance shifted his head until he was snuggling his nose into the crook between Keith's shoulder and neck. There was a comfortable pause between them for a few minutes.

"You're tired," Lance said after a few moments, his voice jolting Keith out of the slight daze he'd fallen into.

"How'd you figure that?" he asked.

"You stopped with my hair."

Which was true. Keith's hand had dropped down atop Lance's thigh instead.

"You have a very large family," Keith explained. "And I am not an extraverted person." He liked Lance's family, but that didn't in any way make him less drained as a result of them.

"You down with just sleeping here?" Lance asked, clearly meaning the bed.

"That's fine."

Lance stood a few seconds later, Keith feeling colder for it. But it fueled him into moving. Pulling up the comforter, he slid beneath it while Lance shucked off his robe and turned down the light switch. The room fell to darkness as Keith settled into his spot with his back to the wall. Lance slid in beside him a few seconds later, lying on his back as was typical.

Scooting closer, Keith wrapped his hands around Lance's upper arm and pressed his nose into the crease between Lance's shoulder and the pillow.

He was asleep within moments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished, so might as well upload it too. 
> 
> Okay, but like, extreme intimacy without a solidified relationship is MY WEAKNESS! And I will utilize it to the fullest extent whenever I can. This story is that. Good luck everyone, you'll need it. 
> 
> HOPE YOU ENJOYED! We'll get more details of Lance's recovery and other things as the story goes on.


	3. The Wrong Thing

Keith was slow to wake up. He was warm and comfortable, and he hadn't gotten such a restful night's sleep in a long while. But the sunlight filtering in through the large window was foreign, and Keith didn't like laying around for too long.

Sitting up, the blanket fell down around his hips, before he shoved it aside completely. It was  _hot_  and he had a light coat of sweat layered beneath his sweats.

But he was in Cuba, and Lance didn't love the heat for no reason, he supposed.

Rubbing his eyes, he looked first to the spot beside him before surveying the rest of the room. Lance wasn't there, but his side of the bed was still warm.

Blinking the weariness from his eyes, Keith pushed himself into standing before heading to the bathroom. Without much in the way of urgency, he took care of his morning needs before brushing his hair and shoving it up into a bun. Lance was always telling him that he didn't know how to relax, so he supposed there was no rush in figuring out what to do with himself. Besides, he was a bit nervous about heading downstairs.

Still, he didn't postpone it too long, able to hear voices coming up from the bottom level as soon as he opened the door. Toeing his way quietly through the hall, he headed down the stairs and into the living room. No one in sight, but he could hear the voices coming from the kitchen.

Going to the doorway, he crossed his arms over his chest and nearly rolled his eyes at what he heard. But instead, he settled for staying quiet and leaning against the wall.

"Do you even know how space  _works_?!" Patrice asked fiercely, slamming her hands down on the table as she glared at Lance. He was standing opposite her, lip curled into a growl and his hands flat atop the tabletop in a mirrored version of his sister's position. His knee length joggers and tank top revealed the extent of his prosthetics and Keith was secretly pleased that he'd found the courage to walk around in something so revealing.

"Do I- Are you- Of  _course_  I know how space works!" Lance rebuked hotly. "I  _live_  in space! My  _job_  is in space! I am literally a full time astronaut!"

"Couldn't have convinced me!" Patrice glared harder.

At the counter, Lance's mother shook her head, her back to the room, while his father stood nearby with a coffee mug in his hand as he silently watched the argument unfold. He spotted Keith as well, the two sharing in light nods before attention was put back on the two siblings.

Outside the window, Keith could see the two grandparents sitting in their respective chairs on the porch.

"I've travelled to different  _dimensions_ , Patrice!" Lance was fuming. "I  _know how space works!_  Have you ever even been to space? No, I didn't think so!"

"I don't have to  _go_  to space to understand it!"

"It'd probably teach you a few things if you did!"

Keith sighed, not the least bit surprised that this was clearly considered normal under the McClain household, if the way both parents seemingly ignored the exchange said anything on the subject.

And perhaps Keith would have been content to continue listening a few moments longer, had something else not violently distracted him.

It all happened very quickly, Keith's thoughts flashing through each variable within milliseconds before he was reacting—

Both Lance's parents and his sister were in the kitchen. The grandparents were outside. Including Lance and himself, that was everyone in the house. Which meant there was no logical reason why someone should be running up behind him. Keith could tell by the swiftness of their footsteps that they were moving fast—too fast to be justified—and that they were going directly for him. The weight of their steps convinced him it was likely an adult.

Every sense Keith possessed and defense he'd learned blared that this was  _wrong_.

And so he reacted.

Turning swiftly, he stretched so his legs were securely balanced before he reached out and grabbed whatever was coming for him around the throat. With a swift swipe of his right leg, he tripped his attacker before slamming them harshly to the ground. He had his knee pressed into their chest a second later, his breath controlled but heavy as he glared down at whoever had thought it was good idea to assault him from behind.

His hold could be lethal with just the right twist of his wrist and his dark eyes glared, chilled with the experience of having done this dozens of times before.

What looked back up at him were shocked, terrified blue eyes that reminded Keith acutely of Lance's own.

"What the hell was that?" Lance's voice snapped Keith out of his actions—not that the realization of what he'd done hadn't been fast approaching anyway.

Breath catching in his throat, his eyes widened in horror before he hastily released his hold around Ray's neck and scrambled off of him. Lance's older brother gasped upon being released, remaining where Keith had thrown him down as the rest of the family filed into the room.

Like he was trapped in a tube with rapidly rising water, Keith felt his panic begin to surge upwards, suffocating him.

He'd just attacked one of Lance's family members. Oh no, oh no, oh no-

"Holy shit…" Ray muttered, reaching up to tenderly touch where Keith had seized him around the throat. There was a red mark already forming as a result, the sight of which sent Keith's heart thudding so loudly that he was certain everyone in the room could hear it.

They were all looking between Ray and Keith in confusion. With the exception of Lance, who's previously lighthearted expression had turned chilly and serious.

"What just happened?" he demanded to know, his gaze finally intercepting Keith's.

Like a rabbit caught in a trap, Keith floundered. He didn't know what to do. If anyone else had done this to him, he's be angry. But this was Lance's  _family_. This was different. He should have known better. He should have had better control.

"I'm sorry." Keith's voice was small and barely audible. If he tried to speak any louder, he felt as though he'd crack right down the middle. "He came up behind me and I…"

He did the wrong thing.

As soon as Keith's words hit Lance's ears, those piercing blue eyes went even darker. His whole expression went from serious to furious, which only made every bit of panic in Keith's whole body turn to petrified shame.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd done anything to deserve that kind of look.

He tried to apologize again, but Lance turned away before he could.

"Did you run up behind him?" Lance asked then, livid gaze pointed toward Ray, who was still lying flat out on the floor.

"I, uh…" Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Ray cringed before continuing. "Maybe? I didn't think he knew I was here and…"

Lance's lips pulled into a snarl. "What the hell is wrong with you, Ray?" he barked, which had the nerves beneath Keith's skin jumping, even if no one else could tell. "He doesn't know anything about your stupid scare jokes, first of all, and second, do you ever run up behind Dad like that?"

Ray didn't answer, perhaps because most people in the room already knew what he'd have to say.

"No, you don't, because that's a shitty thing to do," Lance went on, before taking a step closer to Keith and wrapping a hand a little too tightly around his upper arm. Protectively, which had Keith's frazzled thoughts sparking with confusion alongside everything else.

"Don't  _ever_  do that to him again," Lance said lastly, before finally turning his attention back to Keith. The way his expression had cleared of his anger to reveal desperate concern was like whiplash. The whole situation felt that way, Keith uncertain how he was supposed to be reacting to any of it.

"Are you alright?" Lance asked.

"I- Yeah, I'm- I'm fine," he managed to stammer out, cheeks flushing with embarrassment upon everyone else in the room putting their attention on him as well. "I'm sorry about- I shouldn't have done that."

He should have had better self-awareness. He was on Earth, in Lance's house. There was no reason he'd be in danger here. It was unacceptable. There was nothing to justify going around attacking people simply because they came up behind him. Lance did that all the time and Keith never reacted so violently. Granted, he never heard Lance coming and he always spoke before doing anything else, but that was beside the point.

Ray had just been so close, and the running…

"It's alright, no harm done," Lance's mother assured, a small smile wavering onto her lips.

"Ray's gotten a worse reaction for running up behind people like that," Patrice added. "I punched him in the face the last time he did it to me."

Keith understood that they were just trying to make him feel better, but that still didn't excuse it. He could have seriously hurt Ray, he knew that. He was trained to hurt people in literally any way that was most convenient. One small move and he could have snapped Ray's neck—the idea wasn't even a foreign concept to him.

Which really was fucked up, he supposed. Only the second day here and he was already burning bridges he'd yet to build.

"Hey, it's okay," Lance stepped in even closer, becoming a shield between Keith and everyone else. His voice was so soft, as if what he said was some kind of secret, and it pricked at Keith's heart until his chest ached.

Closing his eyes, Keith reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"C'mon, Ray." Patrice hefted her brother to his feet. "Breakfast's ready and we all know that's the only reason you show up as early as you do."

Keith listened to the footsteps retreating from the room, only allowing himself to release a shaky breath once he was sure Lance was the only one of the McClaines left.

"I'm so sorry, Lance," he whispered, voice stretched taut.

"It's  _okay_." Lance's hands were cradling his jaws a moment later, forcing him to look up and meet that blue gaze. "Ray should have known better. He shouldn't run up behind people like that anyway, let alone… people like us. I probably would have thrown him across the room if he'd done that to me."

"I can't attack people just for coming up behind me," Keith reasoned.

His words had Lance frowning. "He didn't come up behind you, he  _ran_  at you. I know Ray and I know exactly what he did. There's a big difference between someone walking up behind you and someone sprinting at you full tilt when they have no business doing so. It's not your fault you know how to defend yourself."

Keith wrapped his hands around Lance's wrists. "I could have really hurt him."

"Well, now he knows better."

"That's not the point, Lance. What if someone else-"

"Stop. I know exactly what happened, alright? You know I do. We were all in the kitchen, no one else should have been in the house, and someone  _ran up behind you_. If I didn't know to expect someone else to be in the house, I would have reacted the same way. Ray knows full well that you don't know how things work around here and he shouldn't have tried to take advantage of it."

"But-"

"And it's not like you have a history of violently taking people out for no reason." Lance chuckled lightly, his thumbs messaging the skin beneath Keith's eyes. "We go to all kinds of parties and stuff and you don't attack people at those. Probably because most people don't go running up behind others without expecting to get hit."

Shoulders slumping, Keith closed his eyes and tried to believe that Lance was right.

"Ray's a jerk sometimes," Lance whispered, leaning in so close that Keith could feel the way his breath splashed across his face. "You're okay, I promise."

"Your whole family probably thinks I'm insane," Keith admitted, the fear of such settling into his gut like a brick. "Like I'm about to snap at any second."

Something Keith secretly feared was absolutely true.

"No, they don't. There's always been a rule in our house that we don't run up behind my Dad because he's liable to turn around and smack us into next Tuesday. They get it. I promise. And I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

Keith still felt it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

Hands drifting from Keith's face, down his neck, and to his shoulders, Lance jostled him, trying to shake him out of his funk. "C'mon," he murmured. "Mom's making eggs and bacon! When was the last time we had authentic earth eggs and bacon?"

He smiled. Not in a wide, exaggerated way, or with his trademark devious smirk. It was small and soft, and turned any anxious resolve Keith had to jello.

All he could do was follow behind when Lance grabbed his wrist and guided him to the kitchen. Before he knew it, he was sitting at the table beside him, Ray and Patrice bickering in much the same way Lance and Patrice had been previously. It wasn't long before Lance joined in as well, but Keith was too busy staring at the tabletop and listening to his own heartbeat hear what they were saying.

"Here you go, honey." It was Lance's mother that jolted him back into the room, her hand gentle on his shoulder as she slid a plate on front of him. Eggs and bacon, as Lance had said, with potatoes and toast on the side.

"Oh, uh, thank you… ma'am."

"You don't have to call me that," she replied, only loudly enough for Keith to hear over the three bickering siblings. "Rose is fine."

Which Keith was not comfortable with—this was Lance's  _mother_ —but he nodded nonetheless.

She gave his shoulder a light squeeze before turning away, Keith thankful to have a distraction. Picking up his fork, he started in on the food, a little more in-tune with what was being said around him. The three had moved on to a subject about some past experience with a dog and a water tube that had Patrice cackling while Lance pouted, but Keith was too far behind to catch back up.

But between the food and the conversation that was completely and totally not about him, his nerves settled enough that his heart finally returned to a regular pace.

Somehow, though, he'd kind of figured that he couldn't just fade into background.

"So, Keith." With everything she'd made that hadn't yet found a plate, Lance mother sat down beside him before setting it all in the middle of the table. "You attended the garrison with Lance before all this… Voltron business?" She sounded kind, but Keith still struggled to swallow what he'd been chewing before he answered.

"Uh, yeah. I guess we must have had a few classes together."

She quirked an eyebrow. "You guess?"

"He doesn't remember me, Ma," Lance lamented as he leaned into the conversation. "Can you believe that? Me? He doesn't remember at all."

Keith rolled his eyes and shoved a potato between his lips.

"Because you're so unforgettable?" Ray asked flatly, which got a piece of egg thrown at his face.

"So, if you're the same Keith that Lance used to talk about at the Garrison, weren't you kicked out?" Patrice sounded only curious as she asked, but that didn't change the heat that inched up Keith's neck at the question.

"Patrice," Rose scolded.

"It's… fine," Keith replied awkwardly. "Yeah, I was kicked out."

"Why?"

" _Patrice_!" Rose's reprimands didn't seem to be doing anything.

"I, uh, threw a chair at a professor. After I yelled at him. And broke a window with his stapler."

Beside him, Lance snickered, so Keith kicked him in the shin under the table. Which didn't have nearly the effect it could have if his shin had been real.

Patrice's eyebrows inched up skeptically. "Oh. Alrighty then."

"He always leaves out the other details," Lance interjected. "Like the fact that they were hiding details about Shiro's disappearance from him. And that the professor had been the one to grab him first. And that you could have thrown the stapler at his head instead."

"The chair was better suited?" Ray asked with a grin.

"Had more surface area," Keith agreed.

"And how did you all end up…?" Lance's mother made a motion toward the sky, clearly ready to move on to another subject.

"Now  _that's_  a story," Lance cut in. Which Keith was grateful for. He was always happy to let Lance do the talking. He went on to explain with much exaggeration and inflation of his own importance, but his family members rolled their eyes at all the appropriate times, so Keith didn't feel the need to correct. Especially since it did a good job of taking most of the attention off of him.

For a minute, anyway.

"So… you were living in the desert?" Rose eventually asked, her eyebrows pulled together in concern as she looked Keith up and down.

"Uh, yeah." Keith shrugged uncomfortably. "I was tracking the blue lion, so…"

"Didn't your family wonder where you were?" Ray asked around a mouthful of food, his question earning him dirty looks from both Patrice and Rose. "What?"

Clearly, they'd put the pieces together where he had not.

"It's fine," Keith replied. "I don't have any family."

Beside him, Lance reached out and used one finger to scratch at Keith's side, out of sight. He could feel the repetitive motion through his sweatshirt and was comforted just knowing Lance was there.

"Oh…" Ray finally seemed to realize his mistake. "Right, that makes sense…"

"On Earth, anyway," Keith added, because he could see the awkward silence coming a mile away, even if he was too socially inept to actually feel it.

"On… Earth…" Patrice repeated.

"I… have a twin sister," he supplied, forcing himself out of his comfort zone, if only because him getting to know these people would mean the world to Lance. "Her name's Acxa. She serves with the Blade of Marmora."

"I've got a picture of her," Lance added, before pulling his phone out of his pocket. Scrolling quickly through his photos, he seemed to settle on one before sliding it into the middle of the table. All of Lance's family members immediately leaned in to get a closer look.

It was a photo of both him—Keith—and Acxa. They were dressed in their skintight Marmora suits, facing one another. Keith was holding a tablet in his hand, appearing to be speaking, while Acxa leaned over to get a better view at whatever he was looking at. One of her fingers rested on the top edge of the tablet, as if she were in the midst of pushing it down so they could both see.

Keith didn't remember the moment, but that hadn't stopped Lance from capturing it.

"Holy shit," Ray said, awed, before looking back at Keith. "That's really your twin sister?"

Keith nodded while munching on a strip of bacon.

"So you've always known you were… part… whatever you are, then?" Patrice asked.

Keith shook his head.

"They only figured out they were siblings about two years ago," Lance explained. "Axca used to be one of Lotor's generals—he's Emperor Zarkon's son—but she defected and then eventually joined the Blade of Marmora, who were like, that's cool, your mom was one of us, all sins forgiven or whatever."

"The blade- Zar- What?" Ray curled his nose in confusion. Lance had lost them.

"The point," Lance waved the questions aside, "is that- that- I guess I don't really have a point. But isn't it cool?! Keith's half-Galra. I think that's pretty sweet."

Keith furrowed his eyebrows and gave Lance a curious look.

"What? It is! I wish I was half-mermaid…"

Patrice scoffed. "You would."

"If you don't mind me asking." Rose looked to Keith then, drawing his attention her way. "Do you know the story behind… your mother?"

Which Keith supposed was understandably interesting. Thankfully, it really wasn't something he minded talking about. He'd never known his mother and didn't have any particular feelings toward her, especially after having learned  _why_  he'd never known her in the first place. He was mostly just glad to have answers, even if they weren't exactly full of good news.

"She was a member of the Blade of Marmora—a rebel group—and ended up stranded on Earth, I guess. Acxa says she hadn't intended to end up with us, that… feelings got in the way. She fixed her ship and hid out with my father until she had Acxa and me. Then… she left me with my father because I passed for human and took Acxa with her." He shrugged. "Not like they could have stayed on Earth or something." It was like relaying a mission report, which was how Acxa had told it to him. Nothing personal. Just… facts.

Still, Lance's hand drifted from his side down to his hip, where he pinched lightly.

It wasn't so much the story that had him uncomfortable as much as it was Rose's overly sympathetic gaze.

"So you never knew your mother?" Rose asked quietly.

"No. She died when Acxa was still a kid—some kind of ship accident—so…" He poked his food around his plate and kind of hoped that Lance would find a way to change the subject.

"Bet it was pretty cool though, finding your sister," Ray said.

"I guess."

Keith and Acxa weren't close. They'd both been relatively shocked to find out they were related, and they'd talked as much as they'd needed to about their parents, but they didn't really have much else to say to each other. Neither were really the types for conversation, which had seemed like a relief to both of them. They were members of the Blade of Marmora, but other than that… She was just an ally. Their parents hadn't even been together that long, from the sounds of it.

More than likely, he and Acxa had been an accident in the first place.

His lackluster response seemed to have struck an awkward cord across the table, which Keith realized too late to know how to fix.

"They make a pretty deadly team, though," Lance started, more than willing to pick up where Keith couldn't. "You two have worked a whole bunch of missions together, right?"

"Er, yeah." Keith met Lance's helpful gaze. "She's good at having my back. She's probably a better shot than you."

"Tch, impossible." Lance paused and tapped his fingers on the table. "You really think so?"

Keith rolled his eyes. "No, Lance, I don't really think so."

Which seemed to satisfy him. Until Patrice gave him some kind of look that had his smiled turning into a glare.

"And your father?" Rose asked.

"Rose, you're being rather nosy, aren't you?" Lance's father, who was still standing by the counter with his coffee.

"He doesn't have to tell me," she defended, before setting a hand on Keith's forearm. "You don't have to if you don't want."

"I… really don't care," he said rather gracelessly. Once upon a time, he'd have kept such things to himself just because he'd felt it a waste to talk about. But for whatever reason, talking about this stuff seemed to please others. Maybe they thought he was opening up, or something? But Keith didn't really see it that way. Telling someone his father was dead was just… reality. Not like he was talking  _about_  his father. "He had a heart attack when I was a kid. And that was it."

Rose's hand, which was still resting on his arm, gently squeezed. "You poor boy."

Now, it was words such as  _those_  that really made Keith unconformable. But perhaps he shouldn't have expected any different.

"It's… fine, really," he assured before pulling his arm out of Rose's hold. "It all happened a long time ago."

"Well, I appreciate you being willing to tell us," Rose went on, not seeming offended by his need for distance.

"Er, sure."

"Don't worry, Ma," Lance cut in, before slinging an arm around Keith's shoulders. "He's not alone anymore."

"Because he's got you?" Patrice said, tone very clearly suggestive, which had Keith blushing and hiding a bit behind his bangs.

"Yeah, me. And Shiro, Hunk, Pidge, Coran, Allura." Lance buzzed with excitement then, the fact that he hadn't agreed with Patrice's implication causing Keith's stomach to drop. Which was stupid, because of course he wouldn't.

They weren't like that.

"You guys have to meet them. We're like a family. I know you'd love em' all, Ma. I mean, you already love Hunk." Lance had pulled away and was leaning forward on the table again. He then went on to give overly long, and fond, descriptions of everyone, which Keith couldn't help smiling at. They sat at the table for a while, the food slowly getting finished off while Lance did what Lance did best—entertain. His family seemed satisfied with the info Keith had been willing to give, and so no other questions were asked of him. Which was a relief by the time he and Lance were standing. Keith offered to help with the dishes, but Rose refused.

"I'm kind of surprised at you," Lance said once they'd returned to his bedroom.

"What do you mean?" Keith asked, going to sit on the edge of the bed while Lance started rummaging around in the dresser.

"You just… said a lot, is all," he supplied vaguely.

"Not really." Keith screwed up his mouth uncomfortably. "They asked, so."

"I know." Lance shrugged. And for a moment, they were quiet. But it felt bloated and Keith couldn't help thinking that maybe he'd done something wrong. Or maybe that was just left over anxiety from earlier.

"They're your family," he eventually muttered, staring down at the bedsheets as he did. "After what I did to your brother— _especially_  after that—I didn't want to come across…" Like himself. Cold, removed, aloof. Whatever adjectives people liked to use to describe him. He didn't want Lance's family to think that of him. He wanted…

It wasn't so much that he was concerned with Lance's family liking him. He was concerned with  _Lance_  feeling like his family liked him.

"But you usually don't care about that kind of stuff."

He should have expected that Lance would see right through him, however.

"I know." Keith shrugged and refused to meet Lance's gaze, even when he walked over to stand in front of him. "But it's your  _family_." The thought of which had Keith's heart speeding up in his chest.

"Yeah, and they'll like you whether you spill your guts to them or not." The bed creaked as Lance plopped down beside him. "You don't have to impress them, Keith. You're impressive enough just the way you are."

Lance knew him too well. "But… it's  _your_  family."

If there was anyone in the universe Keith needed to approve of him, he felt it was them. And, frankly, he hadn't gotten off to a great start.

"So- So what if it's  _my_  family?" Lance chuckled lightly, but it didn't sound wholly convincing. "Why's my family any different than- than the family of Princess Serid on Cloxio, who you refused to tell anything despite how she flaunted you around like a trophy?"

_Because I'm in love with you._

Keith bit his lip. He couldn't say that out loud. He couldn't ruin their balance—their precious friendship—with his own selfishness.

"I guess you're right," he finally said, though the words felt hollow. "I don't know what's up with me. Maybe I just felt bad after I attacked Ray or something." Shaking his head, he pinched his eyebrows together and yet refused to look at Lance.

Looking at him would make the lie that much harder to tell, and he hated lying to him.

"Oh… I guess that makes sense."

There was another silence between them, before Lance pushed himself back off the bed and to the dresser once more.

"So what do you want to wear today, hmm?" he asked, tone lighter. "Maybe my red sweats with a 'Sun's Out, Gun's Out' t-shirt?"

"What's wrong with what I'm already wearing?" Keith asked.

"That's- You slept-" Lance sighed. "Oh never mind. You're such a hobo sometimes."

"I put these on after I got out of the shower!" Keith defended. "They're still clean!"

"That's  _not_  the point."

"Ugh, whatever." Flopping backwards, he closed his eyes and tried to get his nerves back under control. He did  _not_  give in to the temptation to look up when he heard Lance changing. In fact, he didn't open his eyes again until Lance was sitting beside him once more.

"So…" Lance fiddled with one of the metal edges on his knuckles, which had Keith batting at him to stop. "You're still gonna help me clean my prosthetics, right?"

Keith sat up then. "I mean, yeah, but… are you really sure you want to do this?"

"Why wouldn't I be sure?" he asked, though there was a bit too much force in his voice. "Nothing to be sure about. I gotta do it anyway, might as well get it done now."

"That's not what I meant."

"Just c' _mon_ , Keith. It'll be fine."

Except Keith knew perfectly well that  _he_  wasn't the one Lance needed to convince. But perhaps pointing out Lance's insecurities wasn't the best option at that point.

"Okay, okay, but, just… what are you trying to prove?" Keith honestly wanted to know.

Lance shied away from him. "I'm not trying to prove anything."

_"I'm not trying to prove anything." Lance practically pulled away as he said it. As far away as he could get while trapped in his levichair._

_Keith wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him, but instead balled his hands into fists at his sides. "Why can't you just say what you mean?" he asked._

_"I am saying what I mean!" Lance frowned. "Not my fault it isn't what you wanna hear."_

_He was right, it wasn't what Keith wanted to hear. He didn't want Lance to be okay with Keith just kicking him to the curb. He didn't want Lance to sound so certain despite everything that had happened. He wanted Lance to be as nervous as he was. And he knew that somewhere, underneath all that bravado, Lance had to be upset. Right? Maybe once, Keith would have assumed that Lance took everything in stride, but now he knew him all too well. He could tell by the way his shoulders tensed and his gaze shifted that he wasn't being totally honest._

_"I don't know how long I'll be gone," Keith said then, the silence between them having grown too heavy. Yet his words didn't seem to make it any better._

_"It's fine, Keith. You can't babysit me forever."_

_Keith growled. "Why are you acting like this? There's no one else here so you can stop being a dick anytime now."_

_"I'm not being a dick! I'm just telling the truth! You can't watch my every move for the rest of our lives!"_

_Keith could try!_

_Yet his determination to be stubborn and how he actually felt clashed, and so instead he must have looked pretty upset and uncertain, because Lance's gaze finally softened. Which was all Keith had wanted in the first place, wasn't it?_

_"Hey, I'll be fine." Reaching out, Lance grabbed Keith clumsily by the sleeve of his jacket. The prosthetics were high tech, but it'd take time for Lance to learn how to use them. It'd been two weeks since the surgery to install all three and Lance could barely pick things up, let alone stand, walk, or anything else._

_Tugging, he didn't let up until Keith was sitting down on the bench beside him. Behind them, the window gave them a view of the stars in the Delga quadrant._

_"Nothing's going to happen," Lance went on gently. "Voltron needs you. It's bad enough there's no one to pilot the red lion. We can't have both the red and black lions out of commission. Besides, Shiro and Coran are both still here. They'll keep an eye on me. And Shiro's helping me get the hang of this." He held up his arm like a bulky tree branch attached to his body. "We'll both be so distracted that it'll seem like you've barely been gone."_

_Keith wanted Lance's words to be comforting, but they simply weren't._

_"Hey, c'mon, don't look like that. Keith…" With his good hand, Lance reached out and wiped at the tears Keith had yet to let fall from his eyes. "I swear, I'll be fine."_

_But how would he know if he wasn't there? How was he supposed to monitor how much Lance was eating if he didn't eat with him? How was he supposed to know that the prosthetics were calibrated correctly if he wasn't there when Lance did his rehab routines? How was he supposed to sleep without Lance right there beside him?_

_"Just wait and see. I'll be walking by the time you get back," Lance murmured, before smiling the soft smile that stole the breath right out of Keith's lungs._

_Finally, Keith released a light laugh. "You better be," he managed to say, before sniffing back at the emotion that was trying to block his throat. "We need our red paladin back."_

_"Yes, Sir, Leader, Sir." Lance did a mock solute._

_But his joking wasn't enough to sweep Keith's anxiety under the rug. Reaching out, he gently laid his hands on Lance's shoulders, memorizing the shape of them beneath his palms. Before he allowed them to drift up the sides of his neck, the skin warm and soft beneath his touch. Until he was cradling Lance's jaws in his hands, those crystal-blue eyes meeting his own._

_Swallowing hard, Keith gave in to the desperate emptiness that was growing at the base of his stomach. Wanting some relief—even if he knew it'd only be worse once he left—he leaned in and wrapped his arms around Lance's neck. Pressing his nose into the side of Lance's head—his hair—he took a deep breath and closed his eyes._

_"I promise, Keith," Lance murmured, turning his nose so it was resting against Keith's own hair as he pulled his arms up around his back._

_"You'll be here when I come back," Keith solidified._

_"Of course." Lance managed a light chuckle. "Where else would I be?"_

_Something inside Keith—fear maybe—gave him the gumption to say it. To whisper his fear directly into Lance's ear. "Somewhere I can't follow."_

_He burrowed his nose more deeply into Lance's hair._

_"Keith…" Despite how he tried to keep hanging on, Keith did eventually give in to Lance's efforts to push him back, until they were looking into one another's eyes again. "I_ _**will** _ _be here when you come back. Back then, when I… I was in a bad place, but I'm not there anymore."_

_"I know…"_

_Lance's slightly calloused fingers brushed Keith's cheek, before he gently pushed his hair behind his ear._

_"I'll be waiting for you," he promised._

_Leaning forward, Keith nodded, closing his eyes as he touched his forehead to Lance's own. A slight gasp escaped Lance's lips at the contact, but it didn't faze Keith any. Nor was he bothered when the tips of their noses brushed. He was too focused on Lance's heat, on the sound of his breathing, and feel of skin on skin contact. He filed all these things away in the back of his thoughts, branding them there as best he could in the few moments they stayed like that, seemingly caught in limbo._

_It took all of Keith's strength to pull away. He couldn't do it slowly—he'd never get away then. Instead, he took a steadying breath before jerking back and shoving himself to his feet. Ignoring how cold he was without Lance near, he shoved his hands into his pockets and marched toward the door._

_He never looked back, knowing that he wasn't strong enough to keep going if he did._

_Almost five earth months he'd spent at Lance's side, day and night, never more than a few feet away. There was only one other time during those months that they'd been separated. And it hadn't been for the weeks Keith was going to be absent this time around._

_But Lance had promised. He'd wait for him._

_And Keith would make damn sure he came home._

Sighing, Keith stood, ignoring the hunched pout Lance was slowly succumbing to.

"Fine, fine," Keith said, deciding not to push the subject any further. Which had Lance perking back up. "Let's go then. Might as well start as early as possible."

Lance looked relieved despite the fact that he really had no reason to believe Keith was refuse to help him. Together, they headed back out and down the stairs. Lance had grabbed up the bag he'd brought down with his lion, and so all the supplies they'd need were likely inside. Following close behind, Keith watched Lance seamlessly weave his way through the house. And so was very much aware when Lance's faltering steps implied abrupt discomfort.

Keith trailed a bit closer to him.

"Uh, hey, Ma." Wavering some in the kitchen doorway, Lance shifted his weight from one leg to another before shoving himself forward. His mother turned from the dishes she was washing to smile at him and Keith wondered if she could tell as well as Keith how uncomfortable Lance was.

Keith waved awkwardly in greeting.

"So…" Lance had walked along the backside of the table, making it a buffer between himself and his mother. Keith wondered if he'd done it on purpose. "You don't care if I, like, clean my prosthetics… do you?"

Rose blinked twice, slowly, her smile dissolving into a curious gape as her eyebrows shifted closer together. "Well… no, I don't care, Lance." She was probably asking herself the same thing Keith oftentimes did, which was why Lance considered it necessary to ask in the first place. But Keith had long since decided such things weren't worth questioning. Some scars never healed, and some insecurities always festered.

"Alright, cool." Lance stepped side to side for a second, before holding up the "OK" sign with his free hand. "Awesome. We'll just…" He gestured stupidly to the screen door, as the main door was already propped open.

"Alright, honey." Rose watched as they filed outside. "Just let me know if you need anything."

Lance shortly replied that he would, holding the door open for Keith before they were both standing out on the rickety old porch. The grandparents were no long there, and so Lance headed to the corner where a swing swayed in the breeze, held up by two slightly-rusted chains.

It was quiet, the smell of the ocean wafting up and clogging Keith's nostrils. But it wasn't bad. The sun shone brightly, reflecting off the dry grasses. It was all very… nostalgic. Which was odd, seeing as Keith had never lived on an island, but perhaps all Earth things were equitable when one had been away so long.

The chains twinkled lightly as Lance sat down on the swing, jiggling until his weight pulled them taut. Turning, Keith crossed his arms over his chest and silently watched as Lance rummaged through his bag. He eventually pulled out a small, cylindrical-type tool. Keith didn't know what it was called, but he knew what it was used for.

"Here, I'll do that." Taking the tool right out of Lance's hand, he plopped down in front of him, sitting on his folded legs as he eyed the prosthetic on the left, or Lance's right. It was the one that started just below the knee, which was why Keith had to be sitting lower in order to work on it.

Shifting a few of the small mechanisms on the tool into place, he then slipped it into one of the many tiny notches circling just below Lance's knee—where his leg connected with the prosthetic.

It wasn't exactly a pleasant process, which was why Keith tried to be the one to do it if he could. Before they could remove the leg, they had to disconnect everything that attached it to Lance. Nerves, receptors, all the little things. Removing it without doing such would feel like ripping his leg off, which Keith was sure Lance didn't want to experience again.

But each tiny nerve connector sent a shock to Lance's brain that mimicked the feeling of a needle being poked into his skin, which was why Lance had a hard time doing it on his own. Pain was exhausting, they both knew that, and inflicting it on yourself was even harder.

Turning the tool just enough to shut down the nerve, Keith pursed his lips at the way Lance twitched before he moved on to the next one. Sometimes he wondered what it felt like, aside from the pain. If Lance could feel the small ways in which parts of his leg just shut down, until it wasn't there anymore. Or if it simply felt like the limb was falling asleep. Keith had never considered it a good idea to ask.

Initially, he'd thought that talking Lance through the process would be better. Distract him or something. But, as it would turn out, the snapping pain was  _more_  of a distraction, and so Lance had a hard time keeping up on any kind of chatting, which made it even harder for Keith. Thus, they were quiet, Keith working as quickly as he could while Lance counted the seconds it took to breathe in and out.

Keith was about halfway around the leg when Lance released a light huff. The pain wasn't anything like some of the experiences they had, but it was still tedious. Reaching up with his free hand, Keith slid it gently beneath the cuff of Lance's shorts, pretending as though he needed to hold his knee for leverage when in reality he simply stroked the skin there, trying to offer a bit of quiet comfort.

There must have been something about how Lance "felt" his leg during the process, because he always released his tense breath when Keith finished with the last notch. Setting the tool aside, Keith then turned a few of the discreet gears at the back of his knee—having memorized how to do so without the aid of sight years ago—before the whole prosthetic went limp and clicked. With a slight turn, the whole thing shifted loose, allowing Keith to easily detach it.

Always careful despite the fact that Lance used these limbs to fight and kick around, Keith set it aside before pushing himself to his feet. Grabbing the cylindrical too yet again, he plopped down on the swing right beside Lance—their thighs pressing together—before pulling Lance's leg up across his own even while Lance went to the effort to lift it.

Lance had to shift his whole body toward him before he was comfortable, Keith pushing up his shorts until he could access the ring that connected everything together. With Lance's thigh propped atop his own, Keith bent over and got to work. While Lance leaned his head back against the swing chain and stared out at the yard.

They were in a good position until Keith had to get the connectors around the backside of Lance's leg. Shifting his own body until he was sitting sideways, facing Lance, he then gently propped his leg up over his shoulder, so he could see the underside of his thigh.

When he finally got around to detaching the second one, he simply allowed it to sling over his shoulder at the knee while Lance then used his arms to set himself up straighter. Not all the hardware was removed. At the ends of what were left of Lance's legs, permanent clamps—which housed just as many tidbits as the rings Keith had just disabled—stretched around and formed a sort of robotic screen between his skin and the prosthetic. They were fused to his legs. And while there were ways Lance had to cleans those parts too, they never left him.

"The tube-y stuff is in the- Ah!"

"Just chill." Reaching out, Keith laid a hand against Lance's chest, keeping him from falling forward. His gesture toward the bag had upset the swing and nearly had him toppling off of it, no longer able to catch his balance.

Grumbling to himself, Lance took firm hold of the chain before leaning his forehead against it.

Keith shook his head and leaned down to grab both the bag and Lance's other prosthetic. Handing the shorter leg to Lance, he then looked through the bag until he found the tube of clean-coating Lance had been aiming for. With the delicately woven cloths the olkari had given them, they slowly began to rub the waxing liquid into the cracks and crevices of the prosthetics, as well as over the flat areas.

Keith used his toes to gently push the swing back and forth as they worked, if only because it seemed like something Lance would do if he could.

"I always hate this part the most," Lance said after they'd been working for almost forty-five minutes. "I hate not being able to, like, get up and move."

"I'll move you wherever you want to go," Keith replied easily.

"That's not the point."

Vulnerability was the point. Keith couldn't even begin to imagine how anxious such helplessness would make a person. But Lance was always in much better sorts once they had reattached his legs and moved on to his arm. Which was why Keith saved it for last.

"I know that," Keith verified after a second. "But as long as I'm here, you don't have to worry."

A statement that was followed by silence, before Lance chuckled.

Keith screwed his lips to the side as he looked up at him. "What?"

"It's just…" Lance sighed, pausing in his ministrations as he leaned his head up and peered out across the yard. "Being back here is so… It just makes me think of the last time I was home. Before I knew you. Well, I knew you, but you didn't know me. And I know for a fact you'd have left me stranded in the middle of a desert the first day we met, if you could have. I dunno, it's just… funny, I guess."

"I wouldn't have left you stranded," Keith rebuked quickly, somewhat baffled by Lance's assumption that he would. "I could have left you stranded, but I didn't."

Lance furrowed his eyebrows questioningly.

"When we rescued Shiro. I could have kicked you off my bike, but I didn't. I could have kicked you out of my shack, but I didn't. You know me, Lance. What makes you think I'd have ever done something that shitty to someone?"

The reasoning flew from his mouth, Keith feeling irritation building up with every word. Which wasn't such a new sensation around Lance, even then, but this somehow hurt more. Even if he rationally knew that Lance was feeling insecure and probably talking out his ass.

"I didn't- I just…" Lance fumbled for what to say, before his shoulders sagged in defeat. "You're right. Sorry. Maybe being here is making me feel as bitter about you as I did when we were at the Garrison." He started rubbing at the prosthetic again.

"Why did you hate me so much?" Keith had never actually asked. Never actually cared, really. He hadn't been too fond of Lance either, for a while. The relationship they had in the present had developed naturally from the stupid "rivalry" Lance had forced on them. And so Keith had never thought to question it. No purpose in doing so, really.

"I never hated you," Lance replied easily. "Well, not in the way you think."

"I don't think anything," Keith replied. "Because I could never figure out what your problem was."

Lance laughed again. "You were my problem. You're always my problem."

"Gee, thanks."

"I just mean that, back when we were in school together, I thought you were, I don't know, awesome, or something? Clearly I know better now."

"Asshole."

Another laugh, which Keith was grateful to hear given what they were doing.

"And I was mad, because I tried to get closer to you, but you never even noticed me. And the one time I tried to talk to you, you blew me off. I guess I figured it'd be easier to make you hate me then, if you weren't going to bother being friends with me."

"But I don't even remember you from school."

"Trust me, that doesn't make it any better."

Keith frowned. "Well, it doesn't matter now."

"It matters a little."

Why? Keith didn't get it. What point was there in thinking about the time when they didn't know each other compared to when they did? Hadn't they been through enough to prove a hundred times over how valuable they were to one another?

"I don't know what that means…" Keith said quietly, honestly a little hurt.

Which Lance picked up on immediately, naturally. "Don't worry about it. I'm just being… petty. I didn't mean to say anything to bother you."

"You don't bother me, I just wish you'd explain." Keith hated it when he got like this—avoiding the truth because he knew full well that Keith wouldn't be able to figure it out. "You're my best friend, Lance. What does it matter if we liked each other as stupid teenagers?" He returned his own attention to the prosthetic in his lap, rubbing a little harder out of frustration.

"It doesn't." Reaching out, Lance touched Keith's shoulder. "Hey, I mean it, it doesn't matter. The Garrison is nothing compared to what we've been through."

But Keith wasn't quite ready to let it go. "Then why are you worried about it?"

"I'm  _not_. I was just being stupid."

Keith huffed. "You're never stupid. Just tell me the truth."

A statement that left Lance momentarily lost for words.

"C'mon, Lance," Keith asked quietly. "Quit hiding."

Somehow, someway, in a fashion that Keith didn't understand, his statement had Lance releasing a bitter bark of a laugh.

"Pot call the kettle black much?"

Keith shied away, feeling quite as though he'd been slapped. "What?"

But Lance only shook his head.

And it was then that Keith's simmering irritation turned to anger. "Whatever, man," he settled for saying, before getting to his feet. Without much in the way of delicacy, he reached out and grabbed the prosthetic in Lance's hands, before slinging the longer one back over his shoulder. "I'm going to go soak these, I'll be back in a minute."

Turning away, he ignored the ping of guilt that ticked at his heart every time he turned his back on Lance and instead stomped his way into the house. He didn't bother looking to Rose as he passed, instead heading directly for the living room and then the stairs. He'd fill the tub in Lance's bathroom and soak the prosthetics there.

He was not expecting to almost run Ray down in his angry marching.

"Oh, shit, sorry," Ray said, the two of them nearly colliding as Keith turned the corner into the living room. "I didn't… ah… you're carrying… legs…"

"They're Lance's," Keith said shortly. He didn't care much that his response made Ray visibly pale and uncomfortable. He wanted Lance's family to like him, but what was he supposed to do about the reality of Lance's situation? He had no legs and only one arm. It was done and so he'd take care of Lance in whatever way he needed to be. His family wasn't much of a family if they didn't feel the same way.

"You're pissed at me, aren't you?" Ray asked after a beat of silence between them.

"What? No." Keith was pissed at Lance.

"Look, I'm really sorry about what happened earlier," Ray went on then. "Lance was right, it was super shitty what I did. You could probably kill me with your pinky. I mean, look at you."

Keith had no idea what that meant. But he was right.

"Ahem, anyway, that's what I wanted to say. Sorry." He raised his hands in a submissive gesture. "You clearly mean the world to Lance and I shouldn't have been playing stupid pranks on you. Should have known it'd piss him off, let alone piss you off."

"I'm not… I don't care about that," Keith finally said. "I shouldn't have attacked you."

Ray chuckled, the sound reminding Keith acutely of Lance. Which had him frowning.

"Agree that we both suck, then?" Ray asked. "Even if we both secretly disagree?"

Which only confused Keith further.

"For Lance's sake, yeah?" Ray persisted.

"Uh… sure." Keith nodded. Because what else was he supposed to say.

"Sweet!" Reaching out, Ray clapped Keith on his unoccupied shoulder. "Glad we could be friends."

He walked off then, as if the exchange had been totally coherent and both parties had approved. Keith turned to watch him go, frowning further as he tried to make sense of it all. He ultimately gave up and put his attention back on the stairs.

Yet, somehow, he wasn't quite so angry with Lance anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hrrrrmmmm, seems that even though they know each other so well, there's still willful communication issues. 
> 
> Also, I have a thing for the image of Keith walking around with Lance's leg slung over his shoulder. Like, I don't know why, lol.


	4. Self Care

Well, now Lance just felt like an asshole.

He'd known as he was speaking that what he was saying was low and uncalled for. He'd even admitted it was petty, yet he'd pushed on. Which left him feeling as though he'd abused Keith's good graces, simply because cleaning his prosthetics always put him in a shitty mood.

Scowling, he leaned back in the swing and allowed the breeze to shift him back and forth, seeing as he couldn't very well push himself. The familiar air was somewhat comforting, and the way the sun flashed down upon the edge of the porch reminded him of days dashing out into the light in nothing but a pair of short-shorts down to the beach, his skin soaking up the heat like a sponge did water.

But the image—no matter how familiar—didn't fit into place the way it should have. Instead, it was like he was remembering a photograph, the memory belonging to someone else entirely if only because the boy he'd been so many years ago hardly seemed to exist inside him anymore.

It wasn't just the inability to run on his own legs. There were other things—the dusty smell in his dresser, the unfamiliar creak of the new front door, the way his parents had rearranged the living room. Small things that kept stacking up until the list was so long Lance couldn't remember it all.

Yes, he realized it was stupid. Because of course things were different—it'd been five years. But it wasn't the changes that bothered him so much as… as the fact that he noticed them. That they bothered him so much when he knew they shouldn't. Everything had initially seemed the same, but then…

He was the problem, really. Like usual.

Like with Keith.

Why had he brought up the garrison in the first place? Stupid. Not like Keith had a ton of fond memories of the garrison in the first place. And it wasn't Keith's fault that Lance had been so fixated on him despite the fact that he hadn't even known his name. It  _was_  a long time ago, and, frankly, it didn't matter. Lance knew he'd just been looking for a fight, if only as a way to vent his frustration.

Which had gotten him exactly what he should have expected—Angry Keith.

He felt even worse in knowing that Keith would forgive him. He'd done so for far worse dozens of times before. Even when Lance had been a complete dick to him during their first years together, Keith had always set his feathers back the moment Lance had needed him to. They'd fought, but where Lance had always been overly defensive, Keith had just been  _defending_  himself.

Which was part of what worried Lance sometimes. If only because he didn't know why Keith was so forgiving of  _him_  when he could be so harsh and judgmental of others. Of course, he knew he held a special place in Keith's, what, heart? Psyche? Whatever it was. And he was relatively sure that Keith had feelings for him. Even Keith couldn't be so oblivious as to think that the kind of relationship they had was typical.

But sometimes Lance wondered if he was just reading Keith all wrong. These doubts crept up on him whenever he was feeling particularly down on himself.

Where Lance was a lake, Keith was a black hole. Lance's depth was measurable, he felt, even if most things he kept hidden beneath the waves. Whereas Keith… Sometimes, when Keith looked at him, Lance felt as though his dark eyes could just suck him in. And if that were to happen, he knew he'd never find the base of whatever laid behind. He told himself he knew Keith, but then he never ceased to be surprised by him. What if he  _was_  misinterpreting everything? What if Keith really didn't see any romance in their relationship? Maybe, to Keith, their friendship really was just that—something out of the ordinary, but just as they claimed it was.

This was the fear that kept him from confessing, really. Despite telling himself he knew better.

Keith was so precious to him. But sometimes he left Lance feeling lost, as if he'd drown in that black hole and never even realize it.

He shouldn't have been nasty to Keith. He needed to apologize.

Snapping his eyes to the front door, Lance nearly called out, thinking it was Keith coming back—just as he always did. But it was Patrice that appeared to him instead, her curly hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and her upper body covered in only a bikini top. Torn jean shorts and no shoes. Just like when they were teenagers.

"Heya, Lancey." She winked at him, before looking him up and down. Lance knew her gaze lingered on his legs, or lack of them, but like so many other things he'd picked up on since he'd come home, he pushed that reality aside.

It helped when Patrice immediately snapped her attention back to his face, before one of her devious grins made an appearance. It grounded him, even as he frowned suspiciously.

"This is  _perfect_ ," she purred, before skipping over and plopping down on the swing next to him. She then ran her fingers up his arm, which had him flinching away. "You can't run away from me now."

Lance scowled. "What do you want?"

She hummed teasingly, before kicking at the porch in order to get the swing moving a bit more.

"I wanna know the details," she murmured suggestively, "about you and  _Keith_." She said his name as if she were a cat who'd just snagged a fish out of a boiling pot without getting burned.

Lance sniffed, feigning ease even as his heart skipped a beat. "Details?" he asked. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh c'mon." She elbowed him lightly. "Me and mom both watched you two out here. If he'd reached any higher up your shorts, he'd have been fondling your balls."

Lance scoffed. Patrice had always had a vulgar streak. Lance could be inappropriate, but he'd never possessed the sheer "charm" of his sister when she wasn't policing her language around their parents.

"He was  _helping_  me."

"Yeah, if grabbing your dick is helping."

Lance rolled his eyes. "Keith and I aren't like that."

A statement that had his sister cocking a very skeptical eyebrow. "Right, and the sky isn't blue."

"I'm  _serious_ ," Lance hissed. "We've never been like that."

"Why not?"

"What do you mean 'why not?' Because we're  _not_." What else was he supposed to say?

"Well, you could've fooled me."

"You're not the first person to say that." Crossing his arms over his chest, Lance sank some against the back of the swing. Beside him, Patrice tapped her manicured nails atop her thigh and screwed up her lips thoughtfully.

"I'm not buyin' it," she finally decided.

Lance huffed.

"I've seen the way you two look at each other!" she persisted. "And it's only been a day. Mom was talking to me about it just a minute ago, how she doesn't understand why you haven't said anything about how Keith is your boyfriend or whatever. She says she doesn't get why you're being so quiet about it."

"Because he's not my boyfriend," Lance snapped. 'Boyfriend' seemed wholly unable to define what Keith was to him anyway, whether it was the truth or not.

"Then what is he?"

"My  _friend_ ," Lance corrected.

"That's bullshit and you know it."

He growled.

"Stop harassing your brother, Patrice." Their mother had walked out, untying her apron in the same moment before laying it over the banister. "You have an unfair advantage." That being that he couldn't  _get away from her_.

Groaning, Lance leaned his head against the swing chain. More than likely, his mother had overheard their exchange. Or parts of it, anyway.

"I'm just trying to get the real story, Ma," Patrice defended. "Since Lance is being all secretive about it."

He whipped his head toward her. "Because there's nothing to tell!"

"While I don't approve of your sister's methods, I also don't approve of your lying," his mother said simply.

"Maybe it's no one's business," Lance settled for saying.

Reaching out, Patrice grabbed his nose. "You're being a baby."

"Don't touch me!" Lance batted her away fiercely.

"We're just curious, Lance," his mother explained. "Keith seems like a very nice young man, but you did bring him home. And you two are… very close. You can't blame us for wanting to understand how we should be treating him."

"He's my friend, so treat him like that," Lance stubbornly repeated.

"Then tell us about him," his mother settled on. "How did you two become such close friends?"

Pouting, Lance didn't respond right away. He knew his mother could be nosy, just like Patrice and Ray. But he also knew that, unlike certain sisters, his mother always had good intentions. Besides, his relationship with Keith did tend to give off the wrong impression. It wasn't the first time it'd happened.

"We're teammates." Lance shrugged. "We've been fighting together for five years. It's hard  _not_  to get to know a person when it's like that."

"Then you're this close with all your teammates?" his mother asked.

Lance frowned and tried to push down on the blush that pinked his cheeks. "No…"

He  _was_  close with all his teammates, but like always, Keith was exceptional.

His mother cocked a kind brow. "Lance?"

"Keith's… different," he admitted, finally giving in. They'd only pester him until they were satisfied anyway. "He's, like… You know, he's…" How was he supposed to describe what they were, or, rather, what they had? He'd never had to do it before. Everyone on the castle-ship had just understood why they were the way they were and never questioned it. And when they'd encountered strangers, the old "we're just really good friends" excuse had always worked.

But of course dealing with his family was a new ballgame entirely.

Turning to his mother, he made the mistake of meeting her gaze. Her understanding, familiar,  _safe_  gaze. Which only broke his walls down further.

Fiddling with his fingers in his lap, he shrugged in defeat. "Keith is… I don't know what to say about him. We weren't friends at first, but then we were, and then he was leaving because… and I didn't stop him, even though I should have. And then I… I got messed up, and he came back."

Staring down at his lap, Lance took a shaky breath. "He cared for me, Ma," he admitted quietly, the words so heavy and so bloated that just saying them immediately sent pressure back behind his eyes. "When I was too fucked up to even bother opening my eyes in the morning, he took care of me." He released a short chuckle. "He's still taking care of me."

His mother and sister shared a serious look, before Patrice spoke. "What do you mean?"

"We were at  _war_ ," Lance strained to say. "And I was a paladin of Voltron. They couldn't just… leave me somewhere. But everyone couldn't drop everything to get me better either." It hadn't been easy on anyone. "Yet Keith just… He never gave up on me." He swallowed hard. "Even when I gave up on myself, he never left my side. Sure, we've all saved each other from passing shots or whatever, but he… he saved me from  _myself_. I  _know_  I wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for him.

"Five months, Ma," he whispered, unable to look up for fear that he'd break if he did. "Five months that I couldn't even… And he  _took care_  of me."

He hardly remembered anything from the first few weeks after his accident. Just flashes of existence, but every moment seemed to meld together, as if it'd all passed in some kind of hopeless void. Until he'd sunk so low that Keith had physically pulled him back. Which was when the anger had started. Not angry in the sense that he'd ranted and raved and yelled or anything. He didn't remember doing anything at all, but always there'd been this undercurrent of rage. And hopelessness. Despair. And, of course,  _Keith_. Keith had  _always_  been there. Weeks had passed this way. Lance lost and consumed within himself, with Keith beside him. Keith force-feeding him, Keith pulling him up in the mornings, Keith stripping him down and bathing him, Keith, Keith, Keith.

Some days had been harder than others. Some days Lance had been fueled by the anger. Thin and wasting away he might have been, but awake. Yet even in those waking hours he'd been closed up inside himself. He didn't know if these had been the better days for Keith or not. He'd never asked and probably never would. But he knew those were the days that, when Keith had fed him, he'd turned away. When Keith had lifted him, his breathing had grown heavier. But most importantly, when he'd needed something, he'd had the presence of mind to at least make it known, somehow. Silently, maybe, but there'd been some kind of communication that Keith had understood.

Unlike the days where the anger had simmered, overtaken by the depression and helplessness. When Keith had fed him on those days, he hadn't fought him. But he hadn't helped either. He'd swallowed because his body had known to, not because he'd been thinking about it. When he'd been pulled out of bed, he hadn't even instinctively reacted, let alone leaned up or been anything more than a limp body with his head falling back. Those were the days that—even though Lance could barely remember them—he knew he'd just… been totally empty. So numb that he couldn't even recall the sensation of existing.

How many times had he failed to eat and left Keith to wipe up after him? How many times had he lain limp in Keith's arms, eyes rolled back and head lolling like a baby's? How many times had he failed to find the thread of interaction that would tell Keith he needed to relieve himself, because he'd been so bare inside that somehow even that had eluded him? Which had left Keith to clean up the mess.

Just thinking of being in that place—of being so deeply buried inside himself that he couldn't even accomplish the basics a child could—left him scared and hollow. He'd never even imagined that a person could sink so low, and even then, in present day, he could think back on it, but he couldn't relive it.

Nor did he want to. The idea terrified him. He didn't want to remember or feel the nothingness he had back then. It was too much, and he wasn't strong enough to make it back up to the surface again, were he to let himself sink.

But Keith… Keith had watched him. Keith had been  _present_  when Lance had checked out of everything and everyone. He'd stayed at his side when most people would have decided his measly existence wouldn't have been worth the effort or the time. He'd never given up, even when Lance had completely.

He'd made him live when all Lance had wanted to do was die.

And Lance knew, with absolute certainty, that if Keith had walked away, there'd have been a day,  _again_ , that Lance would have found the smallest inspiration to end it all. That had been part of the reason why he'd been so angry sometimes, because he'd wanted so desperately to die and Keith had never let him.

He owed Keith everything. Owed him a debt so great that there was no way in any reality or lifetime that he could ever repay him.

Things hadn't gotten easier when he'd finally come back to himself, either. He'd nearly wasted away to nothing by that point, having been getting IV fluids in the medbay every day. He hadn't even had the strength to feed himself if he'd wanted to. These were the moments that Lance remembered clearly, like any other memory. He hadn't been surprised Keith was there, but he'd been ashamed. Ashamed that he'd grown exhausted after lifting a spoon to his mouth twice and Keith had had to do the rest. Ashamed that he hadn't been able to get around on his own and Keith had had to lift him and push him and dress him. Ashamed that with only one arm and no balance, he hadn't even been able to go to the bathroom on his own.

Even when he'd finally gotten his strength back, most things he hadn't been able to do without Keith. Until they'd finally gotten all the parts and pieces together to make his prosthetics, he'd been totally dependent on Keith in almost every way.

And, somehow, now that he was well enough to be independent, Keith…

Keith had remained at his side.

After everything Lance had put him through, he'd  _stayed_. And he didn't mean in his physical presence. Of course they were still together—they were teammates. But he meant in the intimate way they knew each other. When Keith could have taken a deep breath and put distance between them, he'd remained close. No, they didn't do everything together anymore, but there was this wavering line that was  _open_  between them. That made it okay that they could sleep in the same bed if they wanted without making a fuss about it. That they could change in front of each other and it didn't matter. Though he'd never tried it, Lance was betting he could jump in the shower with Keith and it wouldn't even be a big deal.

Which made their relationship wonderful and torturous all at the same time. Because Lance  _wanted_  to jump in the shower with Keith, but not because he had pure, innocent intentions. Yet he could never bring himself to make such a move. Sometimes he was certain Keith felt the same way, sometimes he had doubts, and sometimes he found it absolutely ridiculous to think that Keith could be attracted to him in any fashion after every horrible part of Lance he'd had to know up close and personal.

But he was  _pretty sure_  Keith had feelings for him.

He couldn't possibly be that wrong…?

"He took care of you," his mother repeated quietly. Looking her way, Lance could see it slowly sinking in, the implication behind the idea. Caring for someone who'd lost what Lance had, and all at once, was no light burden to carry. Yet Keith, untrained and unprepared, had taken it on anyway.

Looking pale, Rose turned and placed her hand on the banister. Her arm trembled, which made Lance regret having brought up his accident at all. But it also wasn't a subject that could be avoided, a reality he'd been psyching himself up for the night before. His family would want to know some of the details, if only to understand.

Which he hated, but also accepted. Maybe that was part of why nothing seemed quite right. Because there was clear and unavoidable evidence that he could never, ever be the boy he'd been five years ago. Which skewed every fantasy he'd ever had about coming home.

Abruptly, the screen door opened, snapping everyone to attention.

"Oh, uh…" Keith faltered in his steps and looked between them uncertainly. And maybe of he'd been greeted with something more than silence, he'd have been able to recover from his surprise. But this was Keith and he'd never mastered social customs of any kind. "Sorry, I didn't mean to…"

To what? He hadn't done anything.

"You're not interrupting," Rose finally said, her smile overtaking any of her previous upset. "We were just chatting."

Lips pursing, Keith glanced quickly to Lance, looking uncertain, before nodding.

Heading back toward the door, Rose paused just beside Keith, who'd stepped aside to let her pass. Lance could see it in her posture, her considerations. And when she gave in, Lance couldn't help smiling a bit to himself—despite knowing how uncomfortable it'd make Keith.

Reaching out, Rose laid a gentle hand along Keith's cheek, smiling softly up at him. Which had Keith's eyes going wide. And he only grew stiffer when she stepped forward and wrapped him in a hug.

Lance could practically see the panic setting in across Keith's body. And while he had great sympathy for Keith's social awkwardness and would usually go out of his way to prevent him getting uncomfortable, he could do nothing but smile wider this time.

There was something very… satisfying about seeing his mother hugging Keith, especially given what Lance had just told her. Or maybe he just wanted to see Keith being appreciated the way he deserved by other people, Lance couldn't be sure.

"Thank you," his mother said, while Keith raised his arms stiffly in an attempt to try and figure out whether he should hug her back or just stand by and let it happen.

Rose pulled back before he could make a decision, her hand lingering again on his cheek before she turned quickly away and headed into the house. They all saw the way she wiped at her eyes as she did, which hurt Lance despite how he rationalized it.

Keith stared after her, clearly dumbfounded.

"That man is in love with you." Patrice's words were whispered into Lance's ear, startling him into looking at her. "And you're an idiot if you don't believe that."

He did believe her, or so he tried to tell himself.

Hopping to her feet a second later, Patrice waved quickly to Keith as she headed down the stairs to the yard. Keith tried to wave back, but she'd turned away by the time he'd raised his hand.

He eventually headed in Lance's direction.

"What was that all about?" he asked, looking honestly concerned as he sat down in Patrice's place.

Elbow on the arm of the swing and his cheek propped up in his hand, Lance grinned and tried not to be overcome by the warmth that was bursting through every nerve in his body.

"Nothing, my mom just likes you is all," Lance replied, tone slightly teasing. Which resulted in Keith frowning. But his frown was so cute that all it did was make Lance smile wider. "Not that I'm surprised—I told you my family would like you, didn't I?"

Keith didn't appear convinced, but he didn't contradict the words either. Instead, he changed the subject, as if the whole of Lance's family made him too uncomfortable to keep discussing.

"Your legs are upstairs soaking in the tub," he muttered, cheeks aflame even as he lamely tried to move on to other things.

"Thanks." So Lance would let him.

Discussion wasn't, of course, one of Keith's strong suits, and so they fell quiet after his badly executed topic change. But it gave Lance the second he needed to gather his own thoughts.

"Hey." Reaching out, he ran his finger down the side of Keith's shirt, able to feel his ribs through the fabric.

It was selfish, but he took every opportunity he could to touch Keith. Even if it was just lightly. And every time, it sent a thrilling rush through his whole body, even if he'd become a master of making it look natural and unaffecting.

Keith turned to him immediately. "Hm?"

"I'm sorry about earlier," Lance admitted, his shame trickling back into place. "For being a jerk."

Keith's expression softened right away, which had Lance wilting a bit inside. But in a good way—like a flower that had soaked up too much sun too quickly.

"It's okay," he said easily. "I'm not worried about it."

"I wish you would worry about it," Lance admitted, his touch dropping down to toy with the hem of Keith's tank top. "I shouldn't ever be a jerk to you."

"Well, I'm sure I deserve it sometimes," Keith replied, tone gentle and playful in a way that was sporadic, but never failed to bring a smile to Lance's face.

"Sometimes," Lance repeated.

"Yeah, only sometimes. Very rarely."

Biting his bottom lip, Lance chuckled and wondered what he'd ever done to deserve having someone like Keith in his life.

God, he loved him  _so much_. So much it  _hurt_.

"So what do we do now?" Keith asked a second later, never one to simply sit for long.

"That's the beauty of being here," Lance reasoned. "We don't  _have_  to do anything."

Keith hummed in displeasure.

"I can't do anything until my legs are done soaking," Lance reminded him. It'd be at least another three hours.

"You wanna just sit out here?"

"I like just sitting out here." The breeze was nice and the sun felt great.

Inside, Lance heard his mother scolding Ray for no doubt saying something stupid.

Keith, meanwhile, fidgeted, before getting suddenly to his feet. "I'm gonna go for a walk."

"I'll stay here," Lance said, as if he had any other choice.

But apparently Keith had other ideas. Turning toward Lance, he didn't hesitate in reaching up under him and lifting, even as Lance squeaked in surprise and hastily wrapped his arms around his neck.

"What the hell, Keith?" he asked.

"I don't know anything about this place," he said, before turning to walk toward the stairs, apparently content to cart Lance with him, bridal style in his arms.

"That's never stopped you from wandering off on your own before," Lance pointed out.

"You just keep sitting and I'll walk."

"This isn't sitting." Lance shifted some in Keith's arms, but not too much. Not like he had a  _problem_  being in Keith's arms or something.

"Looks like sitting to me."

Sighing, Lance played at being annoyed a little longer before leaning his head down upon Keith's shoulder. With one arm slung lazily around the back of his neck, he laid the other on Keith's chest and fiddled with the fabric of his shirt. He eventually closed his eyes, taking in the full warmth of the sunlight as Keith left the porch behind and headed off into the sandy yard.

They had neighbors, but they weren't super close by. The property had been in Lance's family a long time, which had kept it safe from tourists and companies looking to build so close to the beach. The other properties nearby were in similar situations, and so once the house was out of sight, they were greeted simply by the grassy sand and the trees that bordered the beach. In typical Keith fashion, he didn't stay on the path. Not that it mattered—Lance knew this area like the back of his hand. At some point their property line melded with that of the government and the beach, but Lance had never known specifically where. It'd never mattered much.

They didn't walk long—maybe twenty minutes—before a slight opening in the trees revealed a familiar sandy hill that Lance had played king of the sand on as a kid. Keith made his way up the shallow sides to the top, which gave them a generous view of the beach below. He stood still there, for a moment, which was when Lance realized that his whole reason for coming this way had been to check on the lions.

Typical.

The lions were exactly where they'd been when they'd left them, their shields still erected and causing the waves to splash around their bases. The crowds from the night before had dispersed, but a few people still stood at the shore to look. Lance was pretty sure he could see someone that had dared to swim out toward them, though they didn't get too close.

Seeming satisfied, Keith sat suddenly, his legs crossing gracefully beneath him as he plopped down in the grass. He held Lance in his lap, one arm still supporting him up under his back while the other came up and was set atop Lance's thigh.

"I thought you wanted to walk," Lance muttered, still happy to leave his head resting on Keith's shoulder.

"I did."

"You're gonna get sunburned if you sit out here too long," Lance pointed out.

Keith ignored him.

" _I_  might even get sunburned," he prattled on. "I haven't spent this much time out in the sun in years. And then you'll feel bad, because you're the one that dragged me out here and I can't do anything about it."

"You're so whiny."

"I don't want to get sunburned! I try to keep my skin healthy, thank you very much. Besides, if I do burn, then you'll only burn a million times worse. And then who's going to be the whiny one, huh? You act all tough, but I remember that burn you got on Planet Meero and how much you groaned and groaned for days."

"I didn't 'groan.'"

Lance nuzzled his nose into the crook between Keith's shoulder and his neck, satisfied when Keith tightened his grip around his thigh as a result. "You fucking did. I had to rub aloe on your back every day—I heard the exact amount of bitching and moaning you had to offer."

"Well, that's nothing compared to how much you bitch and moan."

"That is  _not_  the point." Reaching up, Lance tapped Keith on the nose, which caused him to scrunch it. It was adorable, because Keith got little wrinkles beneath his eyes too.

"I can go dump you in the ocean," Keith offered. "Then you won't get sunburned."

"Uh, yeah, actually I would still get burned. And also drown, in case you forgot that part." He continued even as Keith opened his mouth to rebuke. "Also, I was originally concerned about you getting burned, in case you forgot that part too."

Struck abruptly with inspiration, Lance used the arm he had around Keith's neck to reach up and pull his hair loose. Keith wasn't overly strict in how he handled his hair, and so the band came away with a simple tug, Lance fitting it around his wrist as the hair came tumbling down around Keith's shoulders.

He loved the sight of Keith with his hair down. Granted, Lance had a thing for long hair anyway, but Keith had such nice hair. It was soft and easy to deal with, unlike the frizzy mess  _his_  hair became whenever he grew it out, and it had just enough body to possess light waves as it dropped down past Keith's collar.

"Really?" Keith asked flatly as Lance grinned and gathered the long strands into his hand. Careful to make sure his fingertips grazed the back of Keith's neck, he pushed it all around until it was cascading down the front of his further shoulder. At which point he could begin to lightly massage the back of Keith's skull, loving the feeling of his hair between his fingers.

"I'm just trying to help you," Lance defended, enjoying the way Keith leaned into his touch and closed his eyes. "The more your hair covers, the less of you that gets burned."

"Mmhmm." Keith was clearly very pleased with the attention.

"And the less of you that gets burned, the less aloe I have to borrow from Ray." Seeing as Ray was by far the palest of all his siblings. "Not that I would mind rubbing aloe all over your body."

"Why? So you can 'rub it' in my face that you were right?"

Not exactly what Lance had been going for. But hey, he'd tried. "Well, there is that benefit, yes."

"Don't worry. If it happens, I won't tell you."

"First of all, I think it'd be pretty obvious. Secondly, your pretend pride doesn't work on me. And third, if you do get sunburned, the first thing you better do is come crying to me about it, because you certainly aren't going to know how to take care of yourself."

"Contraire to your apparent standards, I've been taking care of myself just fine most of my life."

"Debatable."

"Uh, no, actually. Not up for debate at all."

"Look, you can go ahead and tell me your sob story about running away from every foster family you ever had, but I don't consider being homeless good self-care."

"Wow!" Keith laughed. "I don't even know what to say to that."

"You should say, 'Lance, you're right. My past was shitty and I should let you make all my important decisions for the rest of my life.' And boom, you now have the key to happy, healthy living."

"I think my life has turned out okay, your influence notwithstanding." Albeit, they all figured their lives could be better on quite a few levels. But when considering what they'd been handed… Well, Lance was comforted by the thought that even he knew things could be worse.

"You say that now, but I see plenty of bad decisions in your future." Lance sighed dramatically. "Bad decisions that could all be prevented if you just listened to my advice."

"You're right, you're right. How would I ever survive without you there to tell me how to live?"

Lance laughed. "You sound sarcastic, but I'm pretty sure that's the exact concept upon which our working relationship was founded. And remains functional."

A statement he knew Keith couldn't disagree with, seeing as he'd admitted as much many, many times before. Did Keith have a bit of an impulsivity problem? Yes, yes he did. Which was why Lance was never too far behind him, even if it was sometimes begrudgingly.

"I make some good decisions…" Keith said weakly, frowning as he did.

"You're right, you do." Lance patted the back of his head. "So long as you run them by me first."

Keith pinched his thigh.

"Hey! It's a good thing!" Lance couldn't help laughing again. "This way, when you're old and losing your mind, you can trust me to make good decisions on your behalf."

"If I'm losing my mind, then you probably are too!"

"Uh, I'm a whole  _year_  younger than you. So, no, that is factually wrong."

"You're going to be just as old and decrepit as me, and probably bald. I've seen your father."

"Um, okay, first of all, just because it's  _true_  doesn't mean you  _say it_!" Lance was honestly horrified. "And even if you're right, which you  _never_  are, and we're both losing our minds, you're going to get decrepit  _way_  faster than me."

Keith was smiling. "And how do you figure that?"

"Uh, because half of me is robot," Lance reasoned. "When you're walking around with a walker, I'll still be running marathons."

"You've  _never_  run a marathon."

"I  _could_  run a marathon."

"But you  _won't_."

"You're missing the point, Mullet Brain."

"I don't have a mullet anymore."

"I said Mullet  _Brain_ —I know what kind of hairstyle you have deep down. Now stop trying to avoid the truth." Doing what he could to look completely serious, Lance continued to twine his fingers through Keith's hair. "You'll be old and fragile and probably pissy, like always, and I'll be the only one who's willing to put up with you. So don't burn your bridges, buddy."

"I hope I kick the bucket before anything like that happens."

"No you don't." The words slipped out before Lance could even grapple with saying them. With his free hand, he reached up and gently touched Keith's chin, the certainty that had inspired him to disagree growing stronger with every moment. "Don't say that."

Keith hummed and rubbed Lance's thigh with his thumb. "Sorry…"

Head still leaning on Keith's shoulder, Lance carefully let his hand shift upwards from his chin to his lips, delicately touching first one and then the other, then moving to the tip of his nose before he carefully dragged his fingertip back down to Keith's chin.

"I'll take care of you," Lance whispered.

He could hear the way Keith's breath caught. "You don't have to."

"I want to." Folding his fingers in, Lance dragged his knuckles down Keith's throat, watching closely as Keith swallowed and his adam's apple bobbed. "I'll take care of you, whether you like it or not."

"It's going to be a long time before you have to follow through on something like that," Keith murmured, his voice sounding strained. And doubtful.

"I'll take care of you, Keith," he persisted, making sure to sound sterner. His hand had fallen to Keith's collar, the sharp bones sliding naturally beneath his calloused hand. "I'll be there. I'll be with you. And if you ever need me, I'll care for you."

Keith swallowed again, before he turned so his temple was leaning against Lance's own.

Closing his eyes, Lance twitched so he could nuzzle his nose into Keith's cheek.

"You don't owe me anything," Keith whispered.

And Lance smiled. "I do. But even if I didn't…" He wrapped both arms around Keith's neck, pulling them closer. "I'd still take care of you. Until the day I'm dead, I'll care for you."

Keith's breath audibly shook then, the hand that had been on Lance's thigh moving to meet his other wrapping around Lance's back.

"Don't die before me," Keith whispered, tone choked. "Please,  _please_  don't die before me." He sounded honestly afraid.

"I won't." They'd turned so their foreheads were together, Lance nudging closer until their noses brushed. "I follow you, Keith. Wherever you go." He laughed lightly. "That's what I do—what I've always done. I won't die until you do, and then I'll follow right after."

"Good." Keith smiled despite the wetness Lance could see glistening around his lower lashes. "You said it yourself I couldn't live without you telling me how to do it."

"Damn right."

And maybe the whole thing would have led to more—maybe Lance would have grasped the courage rising up through him and leaned in just a little further. But before he could seize the opportunity, his gaze was snapping to the side as every instinct battle had beaten into him rose to the forefront.

Keith wasn't far behind.

"Who are those people?" Lance asked, glaring down at the beach at the small crowd of black-suited individuals gathering by the shore. They were speaking to a few of the locals, before one of them gestured back toward the trees. To where Lance, Keith, and his family had retreated the night before.

Two turned and started heading up the path that would lead them to Lance's house.

Keith growled, before surging to his feet and whipping around the way they'd come.

"You think it's the government?" Lance asked, holding tight as Keith jogged through the trees.

"Probably."

Abruptly, Lance wished he hadn't picked that day to clean his prosthetics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG! They're so MARRIED but they're so STUPID! WHY DON'T YOU SAY MARRIAGE VOWS SOME MORE, HUH?! WHY DON'T YOU?!
> 
> Anyway, looks like there's some drama ahead or something. Guess we'll have to wait and see how that goes. 
> 
> This chapter felt really long even though it's shorter than the others. It must have a lot of big paragraphs or something, lol.


	5. Jerking Around

At the pace Keith was able to keep up, they arrived back at the house within some seven minutes, but it wouldn't be long and strangers would be arriving at the doorstep.

Skipping up the stairs, Keith pushed his way into the kitchen, where both Rose and Lance's father, Carlos, were sitting at the table.

"There are people coming here," Lance explained as Keith pulled out a chair with his toe and set him carefully down in it. "Government people, it looks like."

"They're armed," Keith added.

And while Rose appeared surprised, Carlos' expression simply darkened.

"I was afraid this might happen," he admitted.

"What do they want?" Rose asked.

"Us," Keith said without any kind of softness. "I wondered if this might happen too."

"But we don't know what they're going to do," Lance's father said calmly. "So let's not jump to conclusions."

"He's right." Lance eyed Keith knowingly. "We need to hear whatever it is they have to say."

"They shouldn't have anything to say," Keith cut in angrily. "Who we are has nothing to do with any of Earth's politics and they should mind their own business."

"Maybe." Lance raised his hands in a calming fashion. "But we are  _on_  their planet." Be it their home planet or not.

Wanting at least some kind of control, Lance turned to his father. "Can you get me a sweatshirt, please?"

His father nodded, before quickly getting to his feet and going to the other room.

"Are we in danger?" Rose asked. "From our government?"

"Not necessarily," Lance assured. "But if you know where Patrice and Ray are, get them. And have them stay with Grandma and Grandpa in the living room. Out of sight."

Clearly lost, but willing to listen, Rose nodded and headed to the back as well, skimming past Carlos as he reentered the kitchen. Keith took the sweatshirt from him before draping it over Lance's shoulders, who stuck his arms through. Once it was in place, Lance zipped it up and stuffed his prosthetic hand in one of the pockets. All while Keith slid his chair behind the table—so he was facing the front door with the table between.

Keith then went around the table and pulled down the tablecloth so it was falling longer on one side, hiding as much of what lay beneath as possible. And Lance casually laid his good hand on the tabletop, pretending that everything was normal.

The closer the suits got, the more he wished he had his legs.

Taking a seat beside him, Keith hunched tensely and watched as the two people headed across the yard, while Carlos motioned for Rose to stay in the living room as he went to answer the door.

"Just stay calm," Lance muttered to Keith, who looked like he was ready to jump up at any second.

It earned him a growl, but Keith didn't object.

"Can I help you?" Carlos asked as he pushed open the screen door and stood at the top of the stairs.

"We're from the Global Bureau of Investigation," a woman said strictly, Lance watching as much of the exchange through the open screen door as he could. "We've received reports that the pilots of the two alien spacecraft down at the beach have taken refuge here."

"I don't know about refuge," Carlos replied, "but my son and his friend are here, if they're the ones you want to speak to."

"Your son is Lance McClain?" she asked. "One of the garrison students that went missing in an alien spacecraft five years ago?"

"That'd be him. Though, if you don't mind me saying, you all seem much more liberal with details now than you were when he first went missing."

Which earned him an impatient huff from one of the officers.

"We need to speak with him."

Silent, but gracious, Carlos nodded before stepping to the side and gesturing into the house. Probably unaccustomed to being "welcomed" into people's homes, the officers hesitated, but did come up the stairs past Carlos and in through the front door. They didn't come much further, however. Not upon seeing Lance and Keith sitting at the table.

Lance smiled, while his father remained standing just outside the door. "Can I help you ladies with something?" He didn't offer to shake their hands or any other pleasantries. Not because he didn't see the value in such things—because he did—but because these people needed to quickly understand that he was not under their jurisdiction. Even if they didn't agree with him.

"Lance McClain, I presume?" The same woman that had originally spoken to Carlos. She was tall, with shaved brown hair and light blue eyes. The other woman was shorter, with a braided ponytail and sunglasses.

Beside him, Keith very obviously set his phone on the table and started a group audio chat with all the other paladins.

"That's Keith Kogane," the other woman muttered.

"Looks like you've got the bullseye on both of us," Lance agreed. "Again, what was the reason you're here?"

"I think our reasoning should be quite obvious," the first officer went on, clearly the one in charge.

"Well, you'll have to enlighten us." Lance kept smiling, while Keith retained his chilly glare.

"You've descended into Earth's atmosphere without the proper licenses or jurisdiction inside undocumented war vehicles. Which you left unattended in a location accessible to the public. I don't even want to begin to summarize the number of laws that have been broken via your actions."

"Laws? Ah." Lance nodded. "I completely understand. But I guess I'm also a little confused. I get that registered military vehicles can't be left unattended in public places, but our vehicles aren't registered with any of Earth's militaries, nor will they ever be. And as far as being unattended, that's hardly the case. Now, if you're coming to me saying that where our vehicles are parked is breaking a local ordinance, that I would understand a little more."

"You can't dance around the point, Mr. McClain."

"Don't you think? I hear I'm quite good at dancing."

"There are a number of reasons I could be here, be it because of laws you've broken recently," she looked to Keith then, "or because of outstanding warrants that would justify your arrest."

"Outstanding?" Keith asked.

"Breaking into a government facility, assaulting government employees, and stealing government property."

"She's talking about when we broke Shiro out," Lance explained when it was clear Keith wasn't putting the pieces together.

"Oh." Keith screwed up his nose then, which was cute. "Kind of disproportionate to consider Takashi Shirogane government property, don't you think?"

"I think it's kind of disproportionate to be treating us like criminals after we saved the whole damn planet," Lance added, pretending as though he were saying it under his breath despite the fact that everyone could hear. "But that's just me."

"You are citizens of countries here on Earth and you are, therefore, required to serve under the laws and regulations of those countries." The woman was getting frustrated with them.

"Okay, like, that's great and all, but are you, what, trying to take us in or something?" Lance cocked his head. "I'm still confused."

"I- We're- You landed alien warships on Earth!"

"Yeah, warships that we pilot and that belong to us," Keith made perfectly clear.

"Not that we don't understand your concerns," Lance added. "Perhaps we should have contacted you all before we broke the atmosphere—that was kind of inconsiderate. But you understand, we've been fighting a space war the last half decade, we were excited to be home. Our stay here is temporary, after all. We have pressing matters to deal with in the Terekie System once we leave. You know, galra terrorists to track, that kind of thing. Nothing you'd all be interested in."

"I think you'll find that, on the contraire, governments here on Earth are  _very_  interested."

Which was exactly the kind of thing both Lance and Keith had been waiting for her to say.

"Be that as it may," Keith said coldly, "but what we do outside this solar system is none of humanity's concern." In other words, mind your own business.

"I think you'll find there are global laws that say the exact opposite."

"And I think you'll find that there are galactic treaties that far outweigh any law dictating the activities happening on Earth's surface," Lance cut in, his own expression finally darkening. "Now listen here, ma'am," he continued before either officer could comment, "we're part of a galactic alliance that is currently working to recover from a war that had absolutely nothing to do with this planet or even the quadrant in which this planet exists, aside from one isolated attack that was thwarted. Earth is not a part of the Galactic Alliance, nor does it have dealings with any civilizations that are. Frankly, Earth is nowhere near being technologically advanced enough to play a part in any of it, nor are we the least bit interested in enlisting humanity's assistance.

"I understand that our presence here is likely upsetting to quite a few people, and perhaps it was an oversight on our part to have not contacted someone about our landing beforehand, but I also won't tolerate someone coming into my family's home threatening me and my associate when we have far more important things to deal with than the politics of Earth.

"So I suggest," Lance hissed, "you adjust your attitude before we have no choice but to adjust it for you."

No, the paladins didn't flaunt their positions most of the time. Usually, whatever planet they were on was familiar with Voltron, intergalactic travelers, and how to accommodate them, even if such things had been a relic from the past. Either that, or they were grateful they were there and didn't ask questions otherwise. Which meant the members of Voltron never had any reason to force their hand. But Lance also knew humans, and knew that they weren't there to bargain, because there was nothing Voltron could give that they needed. They were snooping around in search of more unsavory things, and none of the paladins, frankly, had the time for it. They made nice with governments that needed help or could help them in return, two things Earth couldn't provide in a way that was necessary.

It was about power, and it was the kind of power none of them had any interest in granting anyone on Earth. The fact that most of the paladins of Voltron were human didn't give any government on Earth an edge. They were going to have to work their way into intergalactic dealings on their own, because that wasn't Voltron's responsibility.

"You're the one making threats now, Mr. McClain," the in-charge officer growled. "But let's not forget that when you leave, you leave your family behind."

Keith was on his feet within the millisecond of the woman's last word leaving her lips.

"And let's not forget that you threaten the pilots of the most powerful weapon in the known universe, which is considered a dire offense to nearly every inhabited planet outside this solar system." Keith snarled. "Don't push buttons when you don't know what the consequences are."

His aggressive posture had both officers taking a step back, the air tense even as Lance held up a leveling hand in order to calm things down.

"So with that in mind," he took back over, "let's perhaps turn this into a more civil discussion, hmm? I'll ask one more time—what is it that we can do for you?"

The women looked between them both, before finally seeming to give in slightly. "The head of the GBI… requests your presence at the Algerian headquarters."

"Do they now?" Lance asked and nodded to himself thoughtfully. "While we… appreciate the invitation, we generally deal a little higher than that, if you know what I mean."

"The… invitation comes in the interest of all the countries represented in the GBI and their leaders."

"Perfect!" Lance smiled. "Then let's get all of them together!"

"I…" The main officer was clearly confused. "Who?"

"All the leaders. Of all the countries. Just… gather em' all up and we'll meet em' tomorrow in, uh, Algeria you said? We'd be happy to be there."

"Wait, no." The woman shook her head. "That's not- We can't-"

"Tomorrow's the only day we're available I'm afraid," Lance pretended to cringe. "We're very busy people, you know. Very  _important_  people. Let's say tomorrow at, hm, noon? In the correct time zone, of course. All of Voltron will be there, so anyone who wants to speak with us ought to be there too."

"I don't think we can-"

"And I  _know_  you can." Lance winked. "Glad we could come to an agreement. Why don't you run along then and tell your superiors about the conference and we'll meet you in Algeria tomorrow?"

"I-"

"So unless there's anything else you need to discuss," Keith cut in, "I suggest you leave." He hadn't sat back down, instead having crossed his arms and remained quite sternly standing beside the table. Which probably wasn't the most civil way to end the exchange, but civility had never been one of Keith's strengths either.

The switch had clearly been flipped on the officers, who were suddenly realizing that they were dealing with a situation far above their paygrade. With nothing else to say that Lance or Keith, frankly, wanted to hear, they were basically glared (by Keith) back out the door.

It wasn't until they'd stepped down off the porch that Keith huffed and sat back down at the table.

"Well…" Allura's voice came in over Keith's phone as Carlos stepped back into the kitchen. "There were a few things I would have… reworded, but given the circumstances…"

"We're dealing with something a little bit different than usual here," Hunk pointed out, having become quite the diplomat over the years. "Seeing as no one on Earth actually needs us here."

"That's true…" Allura agreed.

"Humans have to be put I their place sometimes," Lance added. "We tend to get a little, uh… pushy."

"And selfish," Pidge said.

"But this means we all need to be in Algeria tomorrow," Shiro stated, staying on point. "With the lions. And in uniform."

"I'll trace your locations," Coran volunteered, "and send your uniforms to you directly, that way you don't have to keep breaking the atmosphere." Which would probably only unnerve the humans that weren't too excited about them even more.

"Wait, you mean those stuffy military uniforms instead of our armor?" Pidge groaned. "They're so tedious to put on."

"Maybe so, but they serve a purpose," Allura pointed out.

"Yeah, the purpose of being super annoying," Keith grumbled.

"No." Allura huffed. "We're not dealing with a planet at war, so we need to present a different attitude."

"She's right," Hunk agreed. "I don't think we'd be giving off the best impression if we showed up in our battle armor."

"Where the hell did you two park your lions that the feds could find you so quick?" Pidge asked, which had Keith and Lance looking to one another sheepishly.

"In the ocean…" Lance said vaguely. "Maybe close to the coast."

"How close to your family's house is the coast?" Pidge asked.

"Like… a twenty-minute walk?" Lance offered. "In a small neighborhood?"

Technically, he wouldn't even characterize it  _as_  a neighborhood.

A few sighs echoed through the phone.

"Like you all probably did  _so_  much better!" Lance accused.

"Blue is also parked by the coast, but Tokyo is such a huge city, I doubt anyone could locate us unless they knew where to look, since we're not actually  _staying_  with Shiro's family," Allura said.

"And Allura always wears a hood when we go out," Shiro added.

"Our house is on a farm," Pidge said flatly. "My lion has stealth capabilities. I laid it down behind the barn where no one can see it. Ta da."

"I just parked outside of town and took the train in." Hunk practically  _sounded_  like he was shrugging.

"Well!" Lance tried to think of a good excuse, but ultimately failed. "I didn't think about it, okay?!"

"Keith?" Shiro asked.

"I didn't organize this trip, don't blame me."

Lance glared at him. "Gee, thanks for the support,  _Commander_."

"Don't even start," Pidge said quickly. "I'm not taking time out of my vacation to listen to you two flirt-fight with each other."

"We don't-" Lance groaned. "Whatever! So we're meeting at the GBI headquarters in Algeria tomorrow?"

"We should probably meet somewhere else first," Hunk recommended. "You know, fly in together and all that."

"Which one of us is closest to Algeria?" Shiro asked.

"I'm in Canada, you two are in Japan, Hunk is in Samoa, and Keith and Lance are in Cuba, so… Cuba. Cuba is the closest."

"Then we'll meet in Cuba," Shiro decided.

"Would you rather I sent all your uniforms to Keith and Lance's location, and you could all meet there to prepare?" Coran asked.

"That might be easier," Allura agreed.

"Yeah, that's fine," Lance confirmed. "Not like we're being subtle now anyway. Just park the lions with Red and Black and one of us will be waiting on the Beach to bring you guys to the house."

"I'm sending your uniforms now," Coran added.

"We'll keep a look out for them," Keith verified.

"So, uh…" Pidge was feigning her curiosity. "How's the Keith and Lance Cuban Retreat going, huh? You two 'having fun?'"

"It's only been one day, Pidge," Keith said honestly. "What do you think we've had time to be doing?"

"How about you guys just keep that to yourselves," Hunk said quickly.

Keith was not amused. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, guys, so shut your traps," Lance hissed out lastly.

"They've been all touchy and up in each other's business since they got here!" Patrice yelled over Lance's shoulder, managing to hop away before he could make a swipe at her.

"That's how they always are, Patrice," Hunk said.

"And we're hanging up now!" Lance yelled into the phone. "Bye!"

"Wait!" Allura called out. "Keith! You better rehearse with Lance what you're going to say. We don't need a repeat of planet Cloxia."

"That was like two years ago!" Keith rebuked. "And my first time doing anything like that!"

"Rehearse with Lance," Shiro stated simply.

Keith growled.

"Don't worry, I'll whip him into shape," Lance assured.

"Yeah, I bet you wi-"

He hung up the phone before Pidge could finish.

"Ugh, this is the worst!" Lance drawled, slumping some in his seat.

"I hate our formal uniforms…" Keith muttered, before folding his arms on the table and lying face down. "And I hate giving speeches."

"Why can't someone else do it?" Rose asked, having taken a seat beside Carlos sometime during the phone conversation.

"Because Keith's our leader and Allura says it inspires more confidence or something. Also, his uniform has a big cape, so he kinda looks all leader-y and stuff. But hey, don't worry," Lance patted Keith's hair, which had never gotten pulled back up into a bun and was pooling over his arms. "I'll answer all the questions."

"So you're just… forcing most of Earth's world leaders to meet with you?" Ray asked. "Just like that?"

"Well, they don't have to come if they don't wanna," Lance explained. "But we're on vacation. Like hell I'm gonna make this some kind of 'visit every country and talk about Voltron' parade. That's half my fuck- fricking job anyway."

"What if they decide they don't like what you have to say?" Patrice asked.

"We blow them up."

Silence.

"I'm kidding, guys, jeez." Lance sighed. "Allura and Hunk are great diplomats—we'll figure something out. But at the end of the day, Earth isn't our priority and it's way outside the territory we're mainly working in." Which was good, really. It meant Earth was safe.

"We should check the property for surveillance equipment," Keith said flatly, as he pulled his head up and placed it in his hand.

"I'll ask Pidge to do a check tomorrow when she gets here," Lance decided. "And maybe have her put up one of her stealth shields, to stop any aerial bugs from peeking in."

"You mean while you're here?" Rose asked.

Lance looked to his mother and offered her a sympathetic smile. "Probably forever," he explained. "Sorry, Ma, but it was just made pretty clear that our government can't be trusted. We can't be sure what they'll do when we leave."

His mother was clearly uncomfortable, which made Lance feel even worse. Reaching out, he set his hand on hers. "I didn't mean for this to happen," he admitted. "I just… wanted to see you."

"I know." She smiled, turning her hand over so she could squeeze his back. "I'm glad you came home, no matter what happens."

Which would hopefully be nothing.

They sat in the kitchen for a little longer—because Rose set out lunch and no one was going to refuse that—before Keith got a message from Coran saying their stuff was inbound, at which point Keith headed out into the yard and ran the location app on his phone. A few minutes later, he came back inside with a large, altean transport capsule up under his arm.

"That was really just shot down from space?" Patrice asked as Rose directed Keith to set it in the corner of the room.

"Coran's got the castle-ship in orbit behind the moon," Lance explained. "The castle-ship is like our home… base. Yeah, home base. It's a castle, but also a ship. Pretty cool." He shoved the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and pretended like his family wasn't looking at him like he'd grown another head.

They didn't even know the half of it, really.

Once everyone was finished, Keith carried Lance back up to his bedroom. He set him down on the bed before going into the bathroom, probably to check on the progress of his legs. But Lance was pretty sure they still had at least an hour to wait.

"We need to work on what you're going to say," Lance said as Keith returned. Groaning, their "Commander" flopped face down on the bed, his hair splashing out across the sheets and revealing his long, pale neck. Lance wanted to reach out and touch it, but he was too far away.

"I'll just tell them to suck my dick," Keith decided, voice muffled against the comforter.

"Very diplomatic and professional, but not quite what we're looking for here, I'm afraid. Although if you told me to…" Abruptly, Lance's mouth filled with cotton, voice petering out as he swallowed back the line that had been on the verge of erupting from between his lips. Telling Keith he'd gladly suck his dick probably wasn't very "on-topic."

"Told you to what?" Keith asked curiously, turning over so he was lying on his side. And Christ, he was sexy with his hair pouring out across the sheets beside his head, his neck and shoulders left uncovered and exposed. Lance just wanted to…

Never mind—don't think about it.

"Told me to seriously tell all of Earth that, I'd probably do it if only for the shock factor."

Keith rolled his eyes.

"And then we'd have to book it, because I'm sure there'd be lines of people wanting to suck your dick, what with you being a fine piece of ass. And we all know how you feel about crowds."

"Not to mention my dick being sucked by strangers," Keith added, shifting so he was on his back.

"Is it the strangers or the dick-sucking that would bother you?" Lance asked through a laugh.

"The strangers," Keith said quickly. "Definitely the strangers."

"Oh, so you'd be okay with none-strangers sucking your dick?"

"Ah, no." Keith's cheeks reddened a bit. "So I guess the dick-sucking would also be problematic."

"So no dick-sucking for you."

"I didn't say never by no one," Keith corrected. "Just… not strangers or… people I know?"

"Like I said, no dick-sucking for you," Lance repeated, which earned him a frown. "What about ass-kissing then? You could tell them all to kiss your ass instead."

"You know, I think I feel the same about ass-kissing as I do dick-sucking," Keith decided, cringing.

"Okay, so no dick-sucking and no ass-kissing. I'll make sure to file both away as things that Keith absolutely does not want from anyone. Ever."

"Now hold on a second," Keith cut in quickly, looking quite serious despite Lance's laughter. "That's not what I said  _at all_. I could be down for some dick-sucking if it was the right person."

"But no ass-kissing."

"Oh I'd  _definitely_  be okay with that," he admitted, a small smile tugging on one side of his lips. "Maybe  _you_  should try it sometime. Might do some good, you kissing my ass instead of running your mouth all the time."

"Oh okay, sure thing. I'll block that out on my schedule then. Make time to kiss Keith's ass, priority one." Yet he was quite serious. Even if Keith didn't realize as much. Maybe make a side-note about letting Keith sit on his face.

"I might actually get some peace and quiet."

"Oh it wouldn't be quiet," Lance dared to say. "I'd definitely still be running my mouth." All over Keith, that was. While Keith would hopefully be the one making all the noise.

"No different than usual I guess," Keith decided.

"Yeah, everything would be  _just_  like normal, except I'd be kissing your ass." Finally, after  _years_.

"Your worst nightmare."

"Hah, trust me, I have nightmares, but that's  _definitely_  not one of them." Which might have been saying too much, Lance decided, cringing a bit as the words left his mouth. But his meaning seemed to sail right over Keith's head, naturally. Instead of taking the statement for the flirting it was, Keith sighed as if he understood. As if the weight of Lance's words should be on the nightmares they both had and not what  _wasn't_  categorized as a nightmare.

Lance didn't know whether to be frustrated or relieved.

"Well, anyway." Reaching into the drawer of his bedside table—which was beside him as Lance was propped up against the headboard—he rifled around until he found an old pad of paper and a mechanical pencil. "Get to work." He threw both at Keith, who made no effort to catch them. The pencil hit his chest and bounced onto the floor, while the pad of paper landed at his side.

"No." Keith had long since closed his eyes.

Rolling his own, Lance leaned his head back against the bed and just… watched. Watched the way Keith breathed, how he tapped his fingers atop his chest, how he frowned every time he took a larger breath than usual. Probably thinking about all the things he'd have to say and how much he didn't want to say them, the idea of which made Lance smile.

He eventually pinched his tank top between his fingers and tugged it outward, as if he were hot. Which was reasonable. It  _was_  hot, especially upstairs, and while Lance didn't mind the constant layer of sweat—or even notice it—Keith was apparently of a different opinion.

"How am I supposed to think of a speech when it's hotter than a Germanthian giant's armpit in here?" Keith asked, scowling. Lance chuckled, but offered no solution. Mostly because there wasn't one.

Which left him somewhat startled when Keith took matters into his own hands. Gabbing the edge of his tank top, Lance was a mere victim as he began to remove it. The whole scene, while simple and ordinary, had Lance totally mesmerized.

The way Keith thrust his hips upward so as to bow his back. How he tugged the shirt up over his head, the lean muscles of his abdomen contracting while those of his chest stretched and lined together, pressed tight by his arms as he slipped the shirt free completely. The way his hair shifted through the fabric, smooth and tumbling as he then tossed the article to the floor.

The way he sank back down into the sheets, relaxing as he laid his arms up around his head, dark hair fanning about his face. How many times had Lance seen him shirtless? Naked? It didn't matter. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to run his hands across every inch of Keith's pale skin. He wanted to feel his reddened nipples beneath his palms, and rock his own hips against Keith's.

All he'd done was take off his shirt and Lance was  _gone_. Good thing Keith still had his eyes closed.

"Where are you going?" Keith asked as the bed shifted, Lance pulling himself to the edge before dropping down to the floor.

"Bathroom," he said gruffly, using his arms to drag the rest of his body across the carpet.

He could hear the way Keith sat up, and feel his gaze on his back.

"Do you need help?" Keith asked.

"Nope," Lance said a little too quickly. "Got both arms—should be fine." Thankful when he reached the bathroom, he yanked himself in before closing the door behind him. Sighing, he leaned himself against the cabinets beneath the sink and closed his eyes, willing himself to calm down. But he wouldn't have banished himself to the bathroom if he'd had the will to halt his heated thoughts.

Instead, he gave in—as he had so many, many times before—and made himself a bit more comfortable before he slipped his hand beneath the band of his shorts. Sliding his fingers along his cock, which was very clearly erect, he bit his lip and let the fantasies take over what Keith had unknowingly started.

The first time he'd jacked off to Keith had been long before his accident, so it wasn't the subject matter that he'd once found problematic. No, it was the fact that—after his accident—he'd come into the bad habit of doing it while Keith was nearby. The first time he'd pulled himself into the bathroom while Keith had napped on his bed, back in his room on the castle, he'd felt dirty and guilty for days. But somehow or another it'd become a normal thing. Because what was a guy supposed to do when the subject of his desire was constantly around and doing things to get him riled up?

Slipping his dick out of his shorts completely, Lance wrapped his hand around the base and slowly began to shift his hold up and down. The heat of the room only made it worse, being such a great contrast to the constant chill of the castle. God, how he wanted that heat to be Keith. How he wanted his hand to be Keith's instead of his own. Or, better yet, neither and instead Lance could be sinking himself into him, into Keith, and pumping slowly in and out. How badly he wanted it. How badly he wanted to see Keith's back bowed beneath him, opening himself up. How much he wanted to twist Keith's hair in his hands and tug him close, thrusting deeper and deeper with Keith's voice and his breath and his skin slapping against Lance's creating the soundtrack to it all.

Lance pumped himself faster.

"God,  _Keith_ ," he murmured, replaying the familiar fantasy and doing all he could to imagine the things he'd never experienced. "Keith, Keith,  _Keith_."

How he wanted him. How he  _needed_  him.

"Are you alright?" Keith's voice, while velvety and soft and plenty of other things that got Lance off, still sent a lightning strike violently through his brain, seeing as it came from right outside the bathroom door. "Lance?"

He tried to say something, but the whiplash between fantasy and reality made him a bit slower to react. Even as his voice garbled forth with an incoherent objection, the bathroom door was pushed open. Which left him gaping stupidly, dick still in his hand, while Keith loomed in the doorway.

Their eyes met, Keith's hand on the doorknob and a concerned furrow to his brows. And while every second seemed to move extra slow to Lance—his heartbeat abruptly thumping in his ears—he knew it was only a moment before Keith's gaze was dropping lower.

He blinked, dark eyes going a bit wider. He stared. Only for a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity to Lance.

"I said I was  _fine_ ," Lance finally managed to cough out, voice rather high and relatively offended, which had Keith's focus snapping back to his face.

Pale, lips pursing, Keith blinked a few more times. Before he suddenly turned and walked away, pulling the door behind him and closing it with a simple "click."

There was no relief, even as Lance released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Despite how much time he and Keith spent together, and how up in each other's business they could be, this… had never happened. Lance had never walked in on Keith jerking off, or  _whatever_ , and Keith had never experienced a similar "pleasure," until that very moment. And despite how well they knew one another, Lance was mortified.

So mortified that he went soft almost immediately, any fantasies of Keith popped and deflating in the back of his thoughts.

"Shit…" he muttered, leaning his head back and unintentionally banging it against the cabinets. Flinching, he scowled, before tucking his dick back into his pants. If only because the idea of being exposed was making him unsarcastically self-conscious.

No, this would be fine. He and Keith had dealt with much worse than this. Seen each other in much worse states. This was embarrassing, but it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened.

Still, Lance remained sitting on the floor, wallowing in his humiliations, for near ten minutes before he finally got up the gumption to face the outside world. Taking a deep breath and muttering a few encouraging words under his breath (Keith's stupid anyway, shouldn't have come barging in, his own fault), he pulled the door open and dragged himself back out into his bedroom.

Keith was there, of course. He sat on the bed, legs crossed beneath him as he hunched over the pad of paper in his lap. He held a pencil in his hand, but didn't appear to be writing anything. And at the sound of Lance approaching, he didn't look up as he typically would have. Instead, he seemed to hunch further while his frown became even more determined.

The deep flush to his skin was readily apparent, especially without a shirt, and Lance might have laughed at how red his neck, face, and ears were had he not also been feeling acutely embarrassed. Instead, he focused on pulling himself back up onto the bed, before flipping around and settling himself where he'd been previously.

But the silence between them felt like it was going to explode, so Lance's mouth had to take over at some point.

"Well…" he started, the sound of his voice sending another very obvious layer of red up across Keith's face, "that was awkward."

Keith was tracing circles over the paper, not writing anything.

Lance huffed. "I told you I didn't need help," he said simply, supposing Keith really did have no one to blame but himself.

His tone, which was dripping with a kind of "you should have known better" superiority, snapped Keith's attention his way, as well as a glare despite the additional layer of red that assaulted those pale features.

How red could he go, Lance wondered.

"I thought you needed something," Keith hissed. "You said my  _name_!"

And as the words sank into Lance's ears, and somehow permeated the rest of him, he could have sworn he felt his soul leave his body.

"What?" he actually asked, the word coming out as more of a squeak than anything else.

Keith glared harder.

Lance felt like he'd been caught in a trap, because the situation had taken a turn and gotten much, much,  _much_   _ **worse**_. He tried to think of something to say, anything really. Any defense that, even at its weakest, he could use to brush the situation aside and pretend like what had actually happened  _hadn't_. But he was in a corner and there was nothing that could somehow fix this.

What could he say? Yeah, he'd said Keith's name because he'd been jacking off thinking about him? No! But he couldn't claim that yeah, he'd said Keith's name because he'd needed something, only to be somehow okay with Keith walking in on him in the middle of pumping his dick? That was worse. That was a lot worse. Oh god, he had to admit it, didn't he? He had to tell Keith that it was an accident because he'd gotten so comfortable with the soundproof bathrooms on the castle that it hadn't even occurred to him that Keith would hear when he moaned his name.

It was Lance's turn to go a near violent shade of red, his mouth dry as he tried to think of anything to say. But there were no words, which left Keith to come to his own conclusions. And yeah, Keith could be pretty daft about some things, but even Lance knew he wasn't clueless enough to  _not_  get what had just happened.

Keith knew that Lance jerked off thinking about him.

The glare had faded from Keith's face, leaving him looking as uncomfortable as Lance felt. His nose and lips screwed up in that way they did when he was caught in a situation he had no idea to how to deal with, and Lance probably would have thought it was cute had he not been so mortified.

And scared. Yeah, he was really, really scared.

"Uh…" Sound finally found its way out of Lance's mouth, just as Keith yanked his attention back to the notebook in his lap. "That wasn't- I- Um…" He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this embarrassed. "I didn't  _mean_ … to…"

Keith shifted beside him, remaining red and unhelpfully silent.

"Sorry…" Lance finally whispered out, an apology the only thing he could really offer up that might be of any value given the circumstances.

"Lance! Keith!" Patrice's voice caused them both to startle, Keith actually dropping his pencil as she poked her head around the door. Her eyes were narrowed, as if she expected to find them doing something unsavory, which only made Lance more self-conscious even as she deflated in disappointment. "One of your friends is here," she stated flatly.

"Wh-Who- Which one?" Lance pushed strength into his voice. "Who is it?"

"Small, blondish-red hair, looked real mad when she said your name."

"Pidge," Keith managed to blurt out.

"Well, she's here," Patrice settled for saying, before she yanked her head back into the hall and stalked off.

The unwelcome silence blanketed itself over them once again, feeling exceptionally heavy. But Keith had always been good at finding action under stress, even if those actions sometimes had Lance panicking on his behalf.

Standing suddenly, he was still for a moment, seeming to glare at the wall while Lance looked helplessly up at him. Before he took a huffing breath and turned toward him. But even though they faced one another, their eyes didn't meet. Reaching out, Keith easily gathered Lance into his arms before lifting. And where Lance would normally have draped himself all over his carrier, he instead kept his hands to himself, fiddling with his own fingers as he stared anywhere but at Keith.

He felt acutely like a teenager who'd gotten caught looking at porn.

They made their way quickly through the house and to the front door, where they could see Pidge standing outside, looking down at her phone.

She peered up as they headed through the screen door, which was propped open.

"Oh look, it's the two idiots that decided to park their lions within a stone's throw of where they were staying," she said as Keith gently set Lance down in one of his grandparent's rocking chairs.

She was, obviously, not impressed, her hands placed judgingly on her hips. Though she was still petit, she'd filled out some over the years. She was a bit more girl-shaped these days—mostly in the hips—but hadn't changed too much, really. She still kept her hair short, much shorter than the rat's nest she'd sported when they'd first begun piloting Voltron. Her pixie cut suited her and might have made her extra cute were in not for the near-constant scowl she was generally throwing in Lance's direction.

"Ugh, yes, I messed up, can we please move on?" Lance asked, uncertain which one of his teammates he was actually talking to. "What are you even doing here?"

Keith stood beside him, arms crossed over his bare chest. Thankfully, the redness had faded completely from his features.

"I'm here because who knows what kind of surveillance those GBI guys put up around here." Pidge waved her arms out grandly, gesturing to the property. "You want them keeping tabs on your family?"

"Well, no, but I figured I'd talk to you about it tomorrow," Lance muttered, trying to glare, but mostly feeling ashamed. Pidge had that effect on him.

"And  _you_!" Pidge turned to Keith, reaching out and poking him harshly in the stomach. He grunted, bending over slightly upon impact before righting himself again. "No excuses either. You should have known just as well as him. You'd think that with both your heads involved, one of you would have pointed out the idiocy of your actions."

"Are you done yet?" Lance asked.

"No!" Holding out her hand, Pidge caught a small, circular sensor that abruptly dropped out of the air. "I'm  _never_  done."

Scowl ever-present, she whipped around and headed down the stairs. "Keith!" she barked. "Come help me!" She turned back just to glare at Lance again. "Since  _someone_  has decided to make themselves perpetually useless."

"Uh, hello?!" Lance snapped, gesturing sharply to his lack of legs.

"I said no excuses! Now, Keith, let's go!"

Humming in displeasure, Keith gave in and dragged himself down after. From the porch, Lance watched as they walked along the edge of the property, occasionally pausing while Pidge did something with the sensor in her hand. At first Lance didn't know what she needed Keith for, until eventually she handed him something and sent him sprinting to the other end of the perimeter. Then back. Then sprinting off again. This went on for a while.

"What are they doing?" Ray asked as he came out the door. He wore pair of bright orange crocs and held a glass of lemonade in his hand. There was a tiny umbrella in the glass.

"No idea," Lance replied honestly.

Eventually, Rose and Patrice made their way out as well, all four of them watching as Pidge sent Keith sprinting back and forth. Were he being honest, Lance didn't mind the sight. Keith sweating, muscles stretching as he ran. He'd tied his hair back up, but that didn't stop lose strands from plastering across his cheeks and neck.

Ugh, Lance really needed to stay focused on something else. Especially given what he still had to deal with when it came to his "thoughts" on Keith and the world-shattering mistake he'd made.

"He is… nice to look at," Patrice admitted, leaning forward on the banister as Keith ran by. She turned to Lance a second later, a devious grin on her face. "This must be really difficult for you."

"Patrice!" Rose scolded, while Lance tried to find something to throw at her and ultimately failed.

"No, but seriously, what are they doing?" Ray asked for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Lance sighed.

It was another ten minutes before Pidge was skipping back up the stairs, Keith breathing a little heavier as he followed her up.

"Okay, so, I set up a perimeter barrier that should thwart any attempts to penetrate your property via any device Earth's current technological prowess could come up with. And if any type of sensor is dropped through that barrier, it should nullify it completely. It's calibrated to read the serials and purposes of most devices, so it shouldn't mess up any of your appliance or anything like that." She smiled, seeming far sweeter with Lance's family around than she had been with her teammates. "I know it seems a little drastic, but it's really just to preserve your privacy since, you know,  _us_." She gestured to Keith and Lance, as well as herself. "Also, I'll give you each one of these." She held out one of the distress signalers they often gave out to leaders in the alliance. Rose took it, despite seeming quiet flabbergasted by the whole situation. "You press that button and it'll send a distress call straight to Voltron. That way, if any of you are in danger for any reason, we can come, you know, do something about it."

"I see…" Rose was very careful  _not_  to press the button.

"I don't have any more on me at the moment," Pidge admitted, "but I'll grab more from the castle before we head back out." As in, before they left Earth to "go back to work."

"So we can't see this, uh, barrier?" Ray asked.

"Nope! Adding stealth capabilities to my creations is a default, so it should go unnoticed by most everyone."

"But does this mean that, like, you guys are watching us?" Patrice asked.

Pidge shook her head. "It's not surveillance, just defense. So long as things go well tomorrow—which they should—none of you will likely have anything to worry about. All this is mostly just to make sure no one's spying on your personal lives and stuff like that."

"This is Pidge," Lance finally cut in, since his mother and Ray probably didn't know who she was. "She's also a paladin of Voltron, and our tech guru."

Pidge mock-saluted in greeting.

"Oh, I see." Rose nodded. "Well, we appreciate your efforts on our behalf."

"Sure thing! I was giving Lance and Keith a hard time, but I figured I'd have to do this eventually anyway. For everyone's families. They just kind of… sped up my itinerary a bit. With their idiocy."

Lance scoffed while Keith growled.

"Would you be interested in staying for dinner?" Rose asked.

"Oh, uh, I was gonna go to Japan and, well, I mean…" She glanced back at Lance, who shrugged.

"Just stay, Pidge. You can always do that stuff tomorrow or something," he said. "Ma's cooking is on par with Hunk's, so you won't regret it."

"Well… alright then, sure."

And so Pidge hung out with Lance and Keith the rest of the afternoon. Which might have  _just_  been Lance's plan, as it gave him more time to think about his "traumatic problem" as he wouldn't end up alone with Keith so long as Pidge was there, more than likely. She came and hung out in his room while Keith helped him reattached his legs, and told his family every bad story about him in her arsenal while his arm went through the same process his legs had, which carried her well through dinner and afterward. Lance wasn't too thrilled with all his mistakes being made into humorous anecdotes, but it stretched and stretched the time until evening set in.

But even with all that time to think, Lance still didn't know what to do about Keith. Which just made him more and more uneasy. Eventually he'd have to say something about it—they couldn't just pretend it hadn't happened, could they? Boy, it'd be great if they could. Just… move on like nothing had happened.

Rose invited Pidge to stay, seeing as it was getting late and she was due to be there the following day anyway. Pidge had tried to come up with some excuse about time not really existing and that the time of day in Cuba shouldn't really delay her plans, but Rose had insisted. And so Pidge stayed, remaining a good—albeit oblivious—wall that Lance could put between himself and Keith the rest of the night. She sat down with them at the kitchen table to brainstorm about Keith's speech, or mostly make fun of him, and was a quiet presence when Keith reattached Lance's arm that worked perfectly in making it impossible for any "personal" subjects to crop up.

Did Lance mourn the lack of intimacy with Keith while Pidge was there? Yes. But did he regret it given the circumstances? No. No he did  _not_.

Evade and escape—a typical plan utilized by the paladins when the situation looked bleak. And this situation definitely looked really,  _really_  bleak.

Once he was more able-bodied, Lance challenged Pidge to some Mario Cart, which pulled in Patrice eventually. While Keith was scolded into finishing his speech on the couch behind them. It was late by the time they finally gave it up, Pidge having wiped the floor with both McClain siblings multiple times.

"Mom set up one of the extra rooms for you," Patrice said as she shut down the television, her statement clearly directed at Pidge.

Lance, meanwhile, turned back to Keith, tense and trying to think of more excuses to avoid him. But… he was asleep.

Laid out on the couch, his pad of paper was tucked against his chest while his pencil had fallen to the floor. Lance watched him for a moment longer than he should have, somewhat dazed by the… normalcy of it all. Playing video games with his friends, one of them falling asleep on the couch. Like he was in another reality or something.

"-ance? Lance?"

"Huh?!" Whipping his head up and around, he focused on Pidge and Patrice, who were standing above him with exasperated looks on their faces.

"I'm going to bed," Pidge explained. "You got Keith?"

"Oh, uh, yeah, totally. I got him, no problem."

Patrice rolled her eyes before leading Pidge toward the stairs.

Turning back to Keith, Lance unconsciously quieted his breathing as he watched him. The near-constant tenseness to Keith's features always faded in sleep, his mouth hanging open slightly. He had a habit of drooling, but apparently hadn't progressed to that point yet despite lying on his stomach.

Smiling a bit to himself, Lance reached up and gently shifted a few strands of Keith's hair back behind his ear, which caused his eyes to flutter.

"Wha- What are we doing?" Keith asked.

"Nothing, everything's fine," Lance assured, which slowed Keith's natural hastiness in trying to rouse himself. The sound of Lance's voice visibly relaxed him, his eyes falling closed again.

"Mmm, okay."

Biting his bottom lip, Lance held back a giggle as he got to his feet. "I'm gonna carry you upstairs, alright?"

"I can walk," Keith tried to insist, eyes fluttering again as he began to push himself up.

"You've been carrying me around all day," Lance replied, supporting Keith by the shoulder as he sat up. "The least I can do is carry you to bed." Pulling his legs down off the couch, Lance then bent down and shifted his hold so he was cradling Keith against his chest.

"Who else is here?" Keith asked, still groggy, as Lance began to lift him.

"No one. Just you and me." Which was enough to settled Keith's stiffness. Apparently comforted by the fact that no one could  _see_  him being carried, Keith closed his eyes fully again before settling his head against Lance's shoulder. His arms were tucked between them, against Lance's chest, and his legs straddled Lance's hips. Shifting him up just a bit, Lance cradled him with one arm up under his behind while his other wrapped around his bare back.

Apparently Keith had given up entirely on a shirt, and Lance could feel the warmth radiating off his shoulders where he was slightly sunburned, probably just from repeated exposure.

Holding him close, Lance headed carefully up the stairs and into his bedroom, before pushing the door closed with his foot. Not bothering with the light, he went directly to the bed before gently leaning in and laying Keith down atop the mattress. His lashes fluttered a bit more, but he was asleep as soon as he was settled into the sheets.

Foregoing his nighty routine in favor of staying close to Keith, Lance pulled himself up onto the bed as well, sitting for a moment as he watched Keith breathe easily in and out.

A sudden weight dropped down on him then, the dread he'd been ignoring all day feeling all the heavier for it. He knew that, whatever had happened, he and Keith could deal with it, but that didn't change the fact that it'd happened. Or the implications behind it.

He told himself that even though he'd messed up, they'd work it out. But what if it changed things, even just a little? What if this meant that he lost some of their closeness, if only because he'd accidentally revealed how close he really wanted them to be?

How would he live with that?

Releasing a shaky sigh, Lance once again brushed a few strands of Keith's hair out of his face, before leaning down and gently placing his lips to his temple.

It'd be alright. He and Keith could take on anything. Everything would be back to normal, no problem.

Please,  _please_  just let everything go back to normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hrrrmmm, somehow I don't think this is going to blow over well, simply because these two are idiots -_-


	6. Love on the Brain

Keith laid in bed… awhile.

He wasn't normally the type to dawdle, but his brain wasn't usually so preoccupied either. Or if it was, action worked in tandem with his thought processes. As of that morning, however, he didn't know what to do about the things bouncing around in his head, which left him stalled like some sort of twentieth century computer.

Lance had been jacking off in the bathroom. Whatever, Keith did it too. But Lance had also been saying  _his_  name while he'd been doing it, which meant that… that he had to of been thinking of Keith at the same time. Plus, he'd apologized and seemed extremely embarrassed, neither of which were Lance's MOs unless he felt he'd actually done something wrong.

Keith didn't personally feel that he'd done anything wrong—frankly, he didn't know what to feel about the whole situation. It'd kind of… blindsided him.

Lance thought about him, Keith, when he masturbated. What was Keith even supposed to do with this information?

Just thinking about it was exhausting, mostly because Keith could feel the "dangerous questions" creeping around the edges of his thoughts as a result. Questions that were always there, but that he'd become an expert at ignoring the last few years. Yet their weight was acute in those moments, which was perhaps what seemed to weigh him down so well to the bed.

He knew he couldn't ignore them much longer. He was pretty good at compartmentalizing despite his "mood swings" (as Lance called them) and so ignoring the questions had been easier when they'd been in the room next door, so to speak. With soundproof walls he'd put up himself. But now it was like he was vainly trying to clamp headphones down around his ears while the questions screamed only a few inches away.

Why would Lance think about him while he masturbated?

No! No, no, no, don't think about it. Don't ask. Just don't!

_Don't go there!_

But he had to. The questions were practically slamming into his skull like hammer blows. Which was an attack he couldn't just let happen.

Lance was… Lance was a sexual person. Keith knew this. Granted, he wasn't going around to every planet they visited banging aliens day in and day out—Keith definitely would have noticed that—but Lance was clearly very distracted by attraction and other related things a good chunk of the time. Which Keith couldn't  _really_  relate to.

Not that he wasn't attracted to people (specifically: men), he was just far more… selective than Lance appeared to be. He'd had a crush on Shiro when they'd first met, and on one of his flight instructors the year he'd been kicked out of the garrison, and then, of course, Lance. Which was pretty much where he found himself currently, except it wasn't just attraction but a whole hell of a lot more that Keith generally tried to keep on lockdown if he could help it. Made life easier, generally speaking.

And while he had masturbated thinking about Lance more times than he could count (it was one of the few exceptions he had to his "lockdown" rule, because he was pretty sure he'd explode otherwise), he couldn't find certainty in thinking that Lance doing the same about him implied mutual feelings. Lance probably thought about a lot of people when he jacked off, right? It didn't mean Keith was special.

…Right?

Or… or was that exactly what it meant?

The idea made his heart pound a little faster, igniting a small flame that he hastily tried to stifle. But it wouldn't go out and he knew this was very, very bad. He couldn't get hopeful. He managed his amazing relationship with Lance not by lacking in hope, but by constructing a carefully tended shield of neutrality. Did Lance have feelings for him? Didn't matter, because Keith was never going to do anything about it.

He still wasn't going to do anything. But now that heart-wrenchingly nauseous piece of hope was tickling his insides. Maybe Lance did have feelings for him. Maybe Lance would make a move. Maybe something would  _happen_.

Groaning, Keith rolled over and buried his face in the pillow. He was alone in the bedroom, but that didn't mean Lance's smell hadn't lingered.

If Lance had feelings for him, would this "situation" inspire him to confess? Would he take Keith aside and apologize (again)? And then Keith could discreetly—with the utmost subtlety because he had this  _planned_  now—ask him why in the world he'd ever masturbate thinking about him. And Lance, with no other choice but to be truthful, would say it's because he has "feelings" and maybe Keith would be brave enough to also admit to "feelings." And then they could ride off into the sunset or some shit.

Or fuck each other until eternity.

Maybe ride  _each other_ , with a sunset in the background. That could work.

"I am so fucked," Keith muttered, before finally deciding that he couldn't keep indulging in these fantasies and remain sane. Sitting up, he glared out the window, thought of all the crap he had to do that day, and decided that—all things considered—this was going to be a shit-awful day.

Growling, he pushed himself to the edge of the bed, went to stand, got his leg caught in the sheet, and tripped. With a harsh slam, he went chin-first into the ground, the whole room jiggling at his impact.

He sighed and stayed on the floor for a few more seconds, before pushing himself violently to his feet. Yanking the sheet from around his leg, he chucked it at the bed, only for it to hit the side and plop to the floor.

"Whatever! I don't care!" he declared, hands raised above his head in exasperation.

And care he didn't. He went to the bathroom, did what he had to, and ignored anything not related to necessary bodily functions. Which had him showing up in the McClain kitchen shirtless and with a bad case of bedhead. Half his hair was hanging down along his neck, matted and un-brushed, while the rest remained haphazardly dangling in a bun.

"Wow, good morning, Sunshine," Pidge greeted, a pancake triangle halfway to her lips as she stared up at him from her seat on the other side of the table. Keith scowled, before pulling out a chair and dropping himself into it. Not too violently—he didn't want to be rude—but enough to make it quite clear that he was  _not happy_.

He had to counter the stupid, idiotic, adolescent flame of immature hopefulness with something. Unwarranted anger seemed like a good choice, and also the easiest for him to conjure.

"Dude, what did you do?" Lance asked, reaching over in the same moment. He was in the next chair over—seeing as there were only for chairs in the first place—and Keith had to batt his hand away before it grabbed onto his chin.

Just the sight of Lance had Keith's stomach flip-flopping. And no amount of "reining it in" was doing any good.

"I thought I heard a bang upstairs," Lance went on, not seeming perturbed by Keith's foul mood. "Did you fall or something? Your chin is really red."

"None of your business," Keith grumbled, thankful when Rose placed a plate in front of him so he could start forking food onto it. Food was always a successful distraction. Especially good food.

" _Somebody_  woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," Lance sing-songed.

Keith stabbed a pancake with his fork.

"Well, he'd better get back on the right side of it," Allura announced as she walked in from the living room. "Because we have lots to do today!" Shiro trailed behind her, the both of them looking far too prim and put together when considering it was only eight in the morning.

Without even asking, she came up behind Keith and yanked his ponytail loose, before she started to not-so-delicately pull his hair back with her fingers.

Keith ignored it and instead focused on shoveling as much food into his mouth as possible. Pidge watched him from across the table, looking particularly unamused.

"What?" he barked, mouth full and his head twitching back as Allura seemingly produced a brush out of thin air and began to tug it through his hair.

"Just admiring the noble sight of our leader is all," she deadpanned.

"Yeah, Commander Chipmunk," Lance agreed, poking Keith in his bloated cheek at the same time.

"You really could try a bit harder to be in a pleasanter mood," Shiro scolded lastly, a slight frown creasing down into his relatively short and pristinely trimmed beard.

Keith wanted to tell them all to piss off and leave him alone, but he couldn't very well do that with his mouth full.

Which was when a stupid idea struck him, mostly fueled by the thought that "Lance would think this is funny," which really wasn't a rational place from which to take action. But Keith also couldn't pass up the opportunity to make Lance laugh since he still wasn't totally sure how he managed it a good chunk of the time anyway.

Mouth still full of food and orange juice, he did his best to smile. But mostly it was just a cringing, primitive reveal of his teeth that was stretched to exaggeration and resulted in juice seeping forward and spilling out of his mouth. It dribbled down his chin and was followed by small chunks of pancake and eggs.

"Oh, c'mon! Gross!" Pidge whined, covering her eyes with her hand.

Shiro sighed and shook his head.

While Lance, who had snorted a laugh so hard he'd accidentally sprayed juice out of his nose, was giggling so stupidly that he nearly fell out of his chair. Which skyrocketed Keith's mood, as Lance always did, and resulted in him coughing before laughing as well.

In the end, all they really managed to do was make a mess all over their plates and part of the table.

"You two are imbeciles," Pidge snapped, before pushing her plate away, as if she were too disgusted to finish.

"I'm apt to agree," Allura said, before she yanked harshly on Keith's hair in order to get his head back up and in a place where she could work with it.

"Remember the days when Keith hated Lance and never would have done such stupid things?" Pidge asked no one in particular. "I do. Fond memories."

Keith coughed again, but was still too busy recovering and wiping at his mouth to defend himself.

"I admit that Keith and Lance spending so much time together hasn't been altogether good," Shiro added.

"You act like this is my fault!" Lance accused, before wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "But I'll have you know that even though I laughed, my humor is far more sophisticated than Keith's barbaric breakfast antics."

"You said you wanted me to try being in a better mood," Keith finally managed to say, his head practically strapped over the back of the chair as Allura pulled at his hair. "So, I tried."

"Did it do any good?" Lance asked, leaning in closer.

"Absolutely not," Keith lied, before stretching his arm out to get another fork-full of food, as Allura wasn't going to be giving him freedom of movement until his hair was under control.

"Morning, guys!" They all snapped their attention to the front door, where Hunk was walking in with a broad smile on his face.

"Hunk!" Rose bustled over to greet him, Keith watching the familiarity with which she took Hunk into her arms and held him tight, a gesture that was readily returned.

"Long time no see, Mrs. McClain," he said, dwarfing Rose and most everybody else in the room. Hunk wasn't the tallest on the team—that title had fallen to Lance quite a few years back—but he definitely  _looked_  the biggest. Still knocking around a generous girth, he'd only packed on more muscle over the years, if at all possible. His hair was cut much the same as it'd always been, and perpetually held back by a bandana, but he'd grown a sophisticated sort of beard along his jaw and chin, albeit lacking in the mustache Shiro preferred.

Keith had never had much luck with facial hair, and by that he meant that he couldn't grow it. At all. Everyone seemed to think it had something to do with his alien genetics, but Keith didn't understand why being part of a race that was covered in hair would somehow make it impossible for him to have any on his face. Oh well. He'd probably only end up shaving it all constantly anyway, or be unlucky like Lance and  _have_  to because it only came in patchy and uneven.

"Oh, Hunk, you're just the same sweet boy you always were," Rose decided fondly, patting his cheeks in the same moment.

Hunk positively glowed. "Aw, thanks."

"You didn't say that to me when I came back, Ma," Lance objected, which earned him a raised eyebrow from his mother.

"Were you ever a sweet boy, Lance?" Pidge asked.

"I'm always sweet!" he exclaimed.

"Debatable," Patrice interjected as she walked into the room. And as she did, an abruptly still, stifled air overcame the whole kitchen, both she and Hunk meeting eyes over the table. Their gazes practically flashed, before both raised their chins and seemed to size the other up critically.

"Hunk," Patrice greeted coldly as she grabbed a plain pancake without ever breaking eye contact.

"Patrice," Hunk said dramatically, his eyes narrowing a fraction as he crossed his arms over his chest.

For a moment, there was a standstill between them, everyone else in the room looking helplessly between.

Until Patrice finally inclined her head in a slight nod, which was mimicked by Hunk, and turned away. She headed back into the living room while Hunk relaxed back into his regular self.

"They greet each other like that every time," Lance hissed beside Keith, sounding slightly panicked. "I've never been able to figure out what it  _means_!"

Well, Keith definitely couldn't help him there.

"Aw, nice, breakfast!" Hunk said as he approached the table.

"Help yourself," Rose invited. "I'm making enough to feed an army."

"Which we basically are," Pidge remarked.

"Hey! Ow!" Keith called out when Allura yanked a bit too hard on the back of his head.

"Sorry, Keith," she said sheepishly. "Just trying to get it to lay as flat as possible." Which really wasn't too difficult seeing as his hair was generally pretty flat anyway, but Allura's standards were, as usual, too high to be really attainable.

"Alright, everyone hurry and finish their breakfast," Shiro issued. "We still-"

"An  _elf_!" The shout came from the front door, where Ray was standing and pointing rather rudely in Allura's direction. "There's an elf in the kitchen, ohmygod elves are  _real_!"

"Uh oh, I think you broke his brain, Allura," Lance said flatly.

"I'm sorry, what's an elf?" she asked. "Your sister said much the same thing earlier."

"They're humanoid fantasy creatures humans made up and are commonly utilized in works of fiction and art," Pidge explained, before looking up appropriate photos and holding her phone out for Allura to see. "It's the ears, really."

"Ah, yes, I suppose I can see the resemblance," Allura decided, though she didn't appear wholly convinced.

"You'll likely get called an elf a lot," Pidge went on. "Probably get used to it."

"Well, that seems altogether rude," Allura decided hotly. "I'm not an 'elf,' I'm an altean princess."

"Space elf princess…" Ray muttered, still quite shocked.

"Most people will mean it in a good way, probably," Pidge supplied.

"You should join my larping group!" Ray said suddenly, scrambling closer to Allura with an overly hopeful look in his eyes.

"Ray, leave her alone," Lance scolded. "She doesn't want to join your lamo dress up club."

"You didn't think it was lame the summer you dedicated to being a high elf wizard, Sir Genesis of Roddingwell," Ray rebuked harshly, which pulled a very obvious flush to Lance's cheeks.

"You larped?" Pidge asked, and grinned deviously.

"It was one summer and it was a mistake," Lance said sheepishly.

"No it wasn't," Hunk added, looking a bit hurt. "We had tons of fun that summer."

Lance groaned.

"Look at him." Ray pulled his phone from his pocket and easily produced a picture of Lance. Straining to see, Keith eventually got a good look at a much younger Lance in tacky blue robes with a tree-branch staff and pointy ears that definitely weren't his own. "He was totally into it."

"Nerd," both Pidge and Keith said at the same time, which earned them a scathing glare from their local altean impersonator.

"As if either of you are ones to talk," Lance hissed. "Mr. 'I collect knives and think it's cool' and Ms. 'I'm gonna be best friends with every robot I meet.'" Slamming his arms over his chest, Lance pouted.

"At least I don't run around in a dress with a stick and fake ears," Pidge replied, which did make the whole thing sound a lot worse than it was, Keith supposed.

"I think you'd make a very handsome altean," Allura cut in, saving Lance some of his dignity before she looked to Hunk. "Did you also dress up for this larping event?"

"Uh, yeah, but my race was a giant, not an elf."

"Only wimps decide to be elves," Ray remarked, clearly meaning to insult Lance, but really only earning himself a very skeptical, and very dangerous, eyebrow from Allura. "Not- Not that elves are wimps or anything," he tried to backtrack. "Just Lance kind of elves, you know?"

"Careful, Ray," Lance said knowingly. "Allura's five times stronger than the average human and she has magic powers."

Which Ray had already been told about previously.

"I'll just… eat my breakfast in the living room," he decided, laughing uneasily as he grabbed a plate of food and skittered away.

Keith, meanwhile, couldn't tell if Allura was trying to rip the skin off his face with how hard she was pulling on his hair or if he was just the unwitting victim of her irritation.

" _Anyway_." Shiro took a sighing breath. "You all really need to hurry up and finish. We've only got a few hours before we have to be in Algeria and, somehow, you all manage to make getting into your uniforms more of an ordeal than it has to be."

"On it," Lance decided as he pushed his empty plate aside. "Don't worry, Space Dad, we won't let you down." Jumping to his feet, he winked once before spinning around and disappearing into the living room. Pidge followed shortly after, and then Hunk. Which left Keith alone in the kitchen with Allura and Shiro once Rose had excused herself momentarily.

He could tell Allura was nearly finished with his hair. It'd been secured in a high ponytail and he could feel the way she was wrapping a purposefully loose strand around the tie so as to hide it.

"You're ready to give your speech?" Shiro asked him.

"Guess so," Keith supplied with a shrug, which didn't seem to reassure Shiro any. "You can do the speech instead, if you want."

"I'm not the leader of Voltron," Shiro countered.

"You were."

"But I'm not anymore. And as the 'Commander' in charge of current Voltron movements, you need to be ready."

"How can I be more ready than I am all the time?" Keith asked, frowning as he did. He was a little taken aback by Shiro's obvious unease, were he being totally honest. He'd screwed up a few of the dozens of speeches he'd given in the past, but it'd usually been laughed off by his teammates and recovered by Allura and Hunk.

"This situation is rather different than the usual," Allura explained, finally finishing with his hair as she organized loose strands of his bangs to one side, where they typically hung, before sitting down at the table beside him. "I admit that even  _I_  am a bit nervous."

"Why?" Keith asked.

"Earth is very… diplomatically complicated," she went on. "Most civilizations we've dealt with up to this point have been coming off of years of slavery and oppression. Their cultures have been destroyed or subdued, their governments obliterated. Low populations in dire need of our assistance."

"Earth isn't like that," Shiro took over. "Which means we're going to be far more under fire than usual. And we'll have to be much more careful about what we say."

Keith screwed up his nose. "But Earth isn't a part of the Galactic Alliance," he reasoned. "Humans haven't even accomplished space travel outside their own solar system. They have no power over us and so their influence is limited."

"Maybe so, but… but Earth is much more… It's 'more' than I had imagined it would be," Allura replied. "The human population is… enormous. And while Earth is technologically primitive, it won't stay that way for long. Once humans make their way into long distant space travel, they will be…"

"I've explained to Allura quite a bit about human history," Shiro said. "Specifically, our predisposition for violence and war."

"Alteans fought amongst themselves as well, as did most civilizations. But once lessons had been learned, we retained that. Yet humans seem to be like Galra in that they… enjoy violence. And Earth is so much larger than Altea. Larger than most of the planets in our system had been. No, it's not large as far as planets that can support life are possible in being, but  _given_  its size, the human population is… unexpected."

Keith was beginning to get where she was coming from. "So what you're saying is that humans need to know their place," he determined. "Before they decide their place for themselves."

"In a manner of speaking," she replied. "I do not wish to limit humanity's progress, as they may be a great asset to other systems in the future, but I am… wary."

As all of team Voltron was, given what they'd just dealt with.

"Humanity's patterns of behavior are very similar to those of the galra," Shiro supplied. "Which doesn't mean we should be generalizing, but…"

"But there may be ways we can prevent future disasters if we appeal to humanity's other characteristics."

"What are you thinking?" Keith asked.

"We appeal to humanity's natural curiosity," Allura replied, "which reminds me more of alteans than it does galra."

"Initially, keeping Earth out of the Galactic Alliance for as long as possible had seemed like a good idea," Shiro explained. "But it might be better to do the exact opposite. If we decide how and when humans enter the galactic scene, then we have better control of how they react to it."

"There are civilizations still in dire need of help and aid," Allura took over. "Aid that humans could provide."

"I don't think starting any kind of trade with Earth is a good idea at this point," Keith cut in.

"Not trade," Allura corrected. "But bodies."

"We start a volunteer program for humans with an interest in helping," Shiro said. "Pilots, doctors, engineers. People who are willing to selflessly provide aid under the Galactic Alliance's standards and rules. That way, humans can be filtered into the system slowly. A system that is against war and colonization, which will hopefully sway humanity as a whole from falling back on bad vices. Versus letting humanity come into it all on their own and making up their own rules as they go."

"This should also make us look more open and welcoming to humanity as a whole," Allura pointed out.

Which was, yes, a bit against what Keith had originally thought they were going to do, which had been to tell Earth only what they needed to know and that otherwise they needed to mind their own business. Harsh, yes, but given how humans could be, it wasn't a bad option. What Allura and Shiro were talking about was more complicated, and made life more difficult for Voltron as well, but Keith didn't really disagree with what they were saying. He didn't want a repeat of what the galra had done—not in the near or far future.

"But who's going to organize all this?" Keith asked.

"Matt's volunteered to do it," Shiro replied. "He's respected in the alliance and can work as an ambassador. It'll take years of organization and the alliance will have to send ships to transport any who are interested."

"This is going to hasten humanity's technological advancements exponentially," Keith pointed out. "Even if they're not the ones in control of the ships going back and forth."

"We know, but perhaps that can turn into a good thing instead of bad?" Allura offered.

Keith wasn't sure, but he wasn't ever sure about anything. They were Voltron—the strongest weapon known and some of the most politically powerful people in the universe—he didn't exactly have anyone to look to as a good example.

But what Shiro and Allura said made sense. Besides, there was certainty in nothing when there was no precedence. And he'd always seen better results when trying to be proactive than not. Ignoring Earth was easier, but maybe not wiser.

"Alright," Keith finally said, tapping his fingers a few times on the tabletop. "I'll… adjust what I was going to say. Is Matt going to be in Algeria? He should be there if we're going to bring this up."

"Pidge is going to pick him up once she's dressed," Allura said. "And meet us back here before we leave."

"Hm, okay," Keith agreed, already running through his head all the changes he'd have to make to what he'd originally written. Which was annoying, but it wasn't the first time he'd had to do such adjustments.

"I know you'll do well," Shiro said, placing a hand on Keith's shoulder. "You're a lot better at this than you give yourself credit for."

Keith frowned, doubtful.

But he was thoroughly distracted as a result of the change in plans. Which meant the thought of Lance and any potentials had to be put on the backburner while he prepared. It wasn't until he was standing in the living room in his uniform, trying to attach his black cape, that he was abruptly assaulted by more personal matters.

"You've got your serious look on," Lance commented as he walked up. Facing Keith, he reached up and snapped his cape into place atop his shoulders, their fingers brushing as he picked up where Keith had left off. Before he flattened out the wrinkles and smoothed the finely trimmed gold epaulettes on his shoulders.

Keith only grunted in response, before getting quite distracted by the way Lance looked in his own uniform. While their formal dress was tedious to put on, none of them could claim that it didn't look good. With the exception of Allura, they all sported well-fitting white slacks and a pair of sleek, white, pointed dress shoes that reminded Keith of men's monk shoes. It was the tops of their uniforms where they varied.

With no zippers or buttons—which were considered old-fashioned to alteans—they each had a well-fitting jacket the melded together seamlessly in the front, much like Coran's every-day jacket in application. Each jacket's base color was white, but the accents were color-coded to each paladin. Lance, therefore, was red. The trim on his sleeves was red, as was the trim around his high collar. Up the center of the jackets were two thick, blocky stripes that bordered the central seam, with two thinner lines in the same color on either side of those. And through the middle, coming down from their shoulders, was the Voltron "V" which was as white as the rest of the uniform.

Keith's jacket was much the same, only in black, just as Pidge's was green and Hunk's yellow. Yet some had a few differences as well. As Keith sported two epaulettes and his cape—to differentiate him as the "Commander"—Lance also had small variances of his own. He had one epaulette atop his right shoulder, while his left was draped gracefully with a scarlet shoulder cape that ended just at his hip. None of the other paladins wore epaulettes, though they all had delicately designed cords adorning their right shoulders.

On their left breasts, they all had around seven or eight rows of thin ribbons, since it would be impossible for them to wear the honors that had been bestowed upon them in the fashion of the medals and other trophies they'd received. Initially, Allura and Coran had been uncertain about the practice, but upon seeing the simple and seemingly modest fashion Shiro had explained was done on Earth, they'd decided it was a good idea. If only to avoid offending any of their allies by favoring some above others. Although they did wear a few significant medals. One was a Blue Pendant of Peace, which had been given to them by the Alliance as a whole upon the war's declared end. The second was a medal made up of Thymerian Crystal given to them by the thypress people after freeing them. Each pin was worth more than any currency could supply, making them universally priceless, as Thymerian Crystal was the rarest valued "gem" in the known universe. And the third was a simple altean honor that Allura had given them before their final battle, which was the most valuable to the paladins no matter its currency worth. These medals they had placed above their ribbon racks, while on their left breasts they wore the official Voltron pins, which were the Voltron "V" with the silhouette of the black lion's wings sprouting out behind. And beneath these were the final medals, which were individual to each paladin and the lions they'd piloted. Which meant that, yes, both Keith and Lance had two—their active duty lion on top and their previous lion beneath it.

They also had gold stripes on the front of their collars symbolizing their ranks—Keith had three, Shiro had three, Lance had two, while Pidge and Hunk had one. Allura also had two, but one of hers was silver, symbolizing royalty.

"But you clean up well," Lance went on, straightening Keith's collar as he did. His white gloves were pristine and clean, which made Keith paranoid about his own. Glancing down, he made sure he hadn't dusted them on anything, resulting in light stains.

"Stop worrying," Lance scolded good-naturedly, before pinching Keith's chin gently and tugging his head back up straight.

Keith grunted again and pursed his lips.

"You're so stiff," he went on with a chuckle.

"I hate these kinds of things," Keith mumbled, already feeling hot. But maybe that was just Cuba.

"Well, you  _look_  like a million bucks," Lance assured. "So if you forget your words, you can always dazzle them with your cape and shining personality."

Keith gave him a flat look.

"Well, maybe rely more heavily on the cape, then."

Slumping, Keith sighed.

"Hey, c'mon, it'll be fine." Placing his hands lightly on Keith's arms, Lance rubbed them comfortingly up and down. "You've done this tons of times before, you're a pro. And if any of these people have something bad to say, you can just give them your nastiest glare and walk away."

"And you'll waltz in and fix it?" Keith asked.

"Well, somebody will."

Keith hummed, appreciating Lance's words, but not feeling particularly better for them.

"You really do need to, like, chill a bit," Lance persisted, before taking a step closer. In the same moment, he slipped his left hand to Keith's waist while the other linked their hands together. With little to no consideration for Keith's heart-jolting surprise, he pushed them a step back.

It was only then that Keith realized the music that Rose had previously been playing lightly throughout the house had changed to something a bit slower.

"Really?" Keith asked, clumsily catching up and moving as well as he could with Lance's confident steps. Nothing dramatic, but it was still out of Keith's comfort zone, the way they swayed back and forth, slowly circling.

_And you got me like oh_

"Just practicing for when I'm gonna have to waltz in and save your ass," Lance replied, which had Keith rolling his eyes.

_What you want from me?_

Giving in fully, Keith reached up with his free hand and placed it atop Lance's shoulder, looking at the way his white glove contrasted with the red of Lance's cape. If only so he wouldn't turn his head up and meet Lance's gaze.

_And I tried to buy your pretty heart, but the price too high_

"I'm gonna mess up and say something offensive," Keith whispered a second later, closing his eyes as he gave in a bit to his nervousness.

_Baby, you got me like oh, mm_

"No, you're not. You're on your home terf, now. This ought to be easy by comparison."

_You love when I fall apart_

"I probably relate better to most aliens than I do humans. There's a reason I never had any friends at the garrison." Keith let his eyes trail across Lance's uniform, if only so he could pretend to be staring at the Voltron pin. "Or anywhere else, for that matter."

_So you can put me together-_

"You've got friends now," Lance murmured, his hold on both Keith's waist and hand tightening some. "And we'll be there with you."

_-and throw me against the wall_

Keith couldn't help the way his chest tightened, his questions from that morning bombarding him on top of every frayed nerve set off by what they were doing otherwise. He couldn't keep avoiding Lance's gaze, if only because he knew it'd give him some comfort even if it was also accompanied by desperate confusion.

_Baby you got me like aah_

But before he could look up, Lance leaned in even closer. Until his chin and cheek were resting gently along the side of Keith's own head. Their chests pressed together in the same moment, Keith's heart beating fast and hard even as the music kept them slowly and gently swaying.

_Don't you stop_ _**loving** _ _me_

He should be focused on what he was going to say at the conference, but Lance's heavy, breezy scent was turning every thought he had into a white, snow-fakey blur. Until all he could focus on was the man holding him so, so close.

_Don't quit_ _**loving** _ _me_

He should push back, really. Years ago, he should have. As soon as Lance hadn't needed him anymore, he should have cut their intimacy apart, if only to save himself future grief. But instead he'd worn it like a badge, proud, but unwilling to push further. Because what if Lance didn't give in as he had? Didn't want to? What if Lance pushed back?

What if he really was alone in this mess and all he did was end up shredding the badge he'd come to cherish so deeply?

_Just_ _**start loving** _ _me_

"I know you'll do wonderfully, Keith," Lance murmured. His smooth voice drifted into Keith's ear like a secret and he closed his eyes before turning his nose gently into Lance's cheek.

_And Babe, I'm fist fightin' with fire-_

Lance kept whispering. "And I wouldn't have followed you this far if I doubted you were capable of something as insignificant as this."

_-just to get close to you_

"I wouldn't be able to do any of it without you," Keith admitted quietly.

_Can we_ _**burn** _ _something, Babe?_

"That's not true," Lance corrected lightly, "but I appreciate you saying so."

_And I run for miles-_

"It's very true."

_-just to get a_ _**taste** _

Lance huffed, while Keith dared to shift the hand that Lance held until their fingers were aligned.

_Must be_ _**love** _ _on the_ _**brain** _

While Lance easily—so much  _more_  easily, it seemed—folded his fingers down until they were twined with Keith's.

_That's got me feeling this way_

Swallowing hard, Keith took a shaky a breath and pinched his eyes closed so tightly that he knew a wrinkle formed between his brows as a result.

_It beats me black and blue-_

His whole chest swelled as Lance's hand tightened around his own, making him lightheaded and breathless as they circled. A feeling he despised, but that left his stomach so warm and his legs so weak that he knew there was no chance of fighting it.

_-but it_ _**fucks** _ _me so_ _**good** _ _and I can't get enough_

He hated that he treasured every moment.

_Must be love on the brain, yea_

"Keith…"

_And it keeps cursing my name_

All he could manage as a response was to nuzzle against Lance's cheek.

_No matter what I do-_

"With or without me, you'd be fine."

_-I'm no good without you-_

"You know that's not true," Keith murmured.

_-and I can't get enough_

Lance chuckled. "You're hopeless."

_Must be love on the brain_

"But I have faith in you," he continued. "You know I do."

_And then you keep loving me_

_Just love me, yeah, just love me_

_All you need to do is love me, yeah_

_"I have faith in you." His voice cracked through Keith's com like a lightning strike, the sound of it shocking him so badly that, for a moment, the hopeless situation before him was the last thing on his mind. Like a floodgate, Keith was assaulted by so much longing and, frankly, joy, that a desperate whine actually escaped his lips._

_It was the first time he'd heard Lance's voice since before the accident. And by "Lance's voice," he didn't mean the spiteful, begging "let me dies" he'd uttered over and over again the night he'd tried to drown himself in the bathtub._

_"I have faith in you," Lance repeated, his tone strained and scratchy after having gone weeks without use. "You know I do."_

The situation had been bleak, desperate, but, somehow, Lance's words had refocused Keith's frazzled mind. The ambush had happened before the virus in Shiro's arm had been realized, and so he'd been the one to take out the black lion with the other three. While Keith had pushed Lance in his levichair to the bridge to watch in horror as his friends—his family—were overwhelmed.

It was the only time he'd left Lance during his recovery, and the only time the red lion had opened up to him again. He'd gone out to help, but it'd seemed too late. He'd been cornered easily. Or so he'd given into at the time, already so exhausted and hopeless and, just, nearly ready to give up.

But then Lance's voice had reached him. And if Lance, who at the time had barely been above water, could pull himself free long enough to speak to them, then Keith could figure out a way to get through the throngs of fighters firing down on him.

Somehow, someway, they'd pulled it off. They'd formed Voltron.

And Keith had gone sprinting back to the bridge, to  _Lance_ , as soon as he'd been able.

_Don't you stop_ _**loving** _ _me_

_Don't quit_ _**loving** _ _me_

Maybe Keith really was hopeless. He told himself he needed to push back, yet there he was, pressed up against Lance as they danced over the worn carpet in a house Keith didn't know. In a house that was Lance's history, that was part of everything that he was. Somehow, Keith had ended up there, the early morning sun shining in through the windows while his own body heated for reasons he'd once had strict control over. He was falling apart from the inside out because of a few stupid questions he'd once refused to ask.

Falling apart and hiding it as best he could, all while they circled and circled and circled.

_Just_ _**start loving** _ _me_

"Hey, guys." Hunk's voice, while gentle by default, felt akin to someone coming up and thwacking Keith on the back of the head. "We, ah…" He'd poked his head around the doorway, Keith and Lance not quite fast enough in pulling apart. They barely pulled apart at all, actually. Just enough to look Hunk's way. "We should probably get going," he continued. "Pidge just got back with Matt."

"Oh, okay," Lance said easily, somehow not fazed by how close they were while Keith felt a slight blush rise to his cheeks. Not that their teammates hadn't witnessed the two of them being "close" before. But somehow Keith couldn't just brush it aside this time, probably because of where his thoughts had been the whole time.

Hunk smiled before disappearing back into the kitchen again, which had Lance's attention back on Keith.

"You ready?" he asked.

Finally able to meet Lance's gaze, Keith didn't answer. He was too distracted still, too slow in coming up from the moment. Which left him questioning yet unable to express as much.

But something must have shown on his face, because Lance's good-natured grin faltered before he cleared his throat and looked away. Was he blushing? Keith wasn't sure.

Curious.

"C'mon, I know you're ready," Lance decided, stepping back fully. Keith's hand fell from his shoulder, the weight on his waist where Lance's hand had been feeling abruptly chilled in comparison to the rest of his body.

Lance turned to walk away, the distance between them growing. Which only strengthened the chill slowly spreading through Keith's entire body, the points where their fingers remained linked the only warmth he could really register.

When Lance finished the steps that would separate them completely, Keith tightened his hold. Which halted Lance in his tracks. Their arms hung between them, stringing them together if only because Keith wasn't ready to let go.

Turning back to him, Lance raised a curious brow.

Which had Keith's heart jumping into his throat. For all their closeness, there had never been anything forced between them. They moved like water around one another, their gestures natural and forgiving, light yet important, and slipping away when necessary.

Keith shouldn't have kept holding on, yet…

Cocking his head to the side, he was once again assaulted by "questions," his brows scrunching despite how his insides screamed to just  _let go_.

Lance wanted him to let go. He could tell by the way he shrank away, his shoulders tensing as yet another flash of redness swelled up and rosied his tan cheeks.

Let go! Let go!  _Let go_!

Like prying nails from concrete, Keith forced himself to pull back. His fingers sliding from Lance's didn't feel like water at all, each and every one of their knuckles knocking together sending a shocking throb across Keith's hand. Until every bit of him was cold and he was swallowing back every desperate question that was trying to claw its way out of his mouth.

"I guess we probably don't want to keep them waiting." Keith finally found his voice. He needlessly reached up to straighten his collar, if only to try and make up for the emptiness still fresh around his fingers.

"Uh, probably not," Lance agreed, clearing his throat again a second later.

Pursing his lips, Keith took a deep breath and stepped forward. He ignored Lance's breezy scent as he passed, instead forcibly putting his focus on the task at hand.

"Shiro and Allura talked to you about the change in plans?" Lance as they headed through the kitchen and out the door. The others were all waiting for them, aside from Pidge who was likely down at the beach.

"Yeah, though it'd be nice to know these kinds of things  _before_  the day of," Keith muttered, which earned him a laugh from Lance.

"And here I thought perhaps you two had decided not to attend at all," Allura said as they approached, though there was a soft smile pulling at her lips. Like the rest of them, she sported formal dress, having long since turned in her princess gown. But while her jacket was made to match everyone else's, she had exchanged the slacks for a long, white, flowing skirt that brushed the ground in graceful waves. With her hair up in her bun and her crown lining her forehead, she was just different enough to remain an altean princess while still fitting in. No, her rank as altean royalty wouldn't mean much outside her status as "alien" to humans, but other races throughout the galaxy knew of alteans and so her differentiating outfit had worked in their favor on numerous occasions.

"If only," Keith grumbled. Which earned him a sympathetic smile from Shiro, as well as a supportive pat on the shoulder.

Despite no longer being an active paladin, Shiro still wore a uniform to match theirs. He didn't have epaulettes or the cape despite having once been the "Commander"—these were for "active commanders," as Coran had explained—but he did have a sash around his waist that none of the rest of them would have until they'd "retired" from being paladins, if that was even a thing that could happen.

"We'll be watching you on television!" Patrice yelled from the porch as they headed toward the trees.

"Yeah, so don't mess up!" Ray added.

Keith hummed in displeasure.

Lagging a bit behind the others, he stared at his feet as he ran through his head the formatting of his speech as well as the transitions that would allow him to remember what he was supposed to say next. Cue words, really, because he wasn't allowed to bring notes with him. At his first few speeches he'd had note cards, but even with Lance coaching him, he hadn't been able to defeat the urge to plainly and flatly read what he had written, all without looking up at his audience. And so his helpful hints had been violently ripped away by Allura, who'd claimed she could no longer stand to be embarrassed by him reading his speeches like a child reading off a grocery list.

The others chatted, but Keith kept quiet. And with his nerves once again sparking, he found himself at the beach in what felt like no time at all. The one saving grace he had was that—despite being nervous—he'd done this enough times that it really was like riding a bike. He just happened to be someone who didn't like cycling, but whatever.

There was a crowd on shore as they headed forward, which was no surprise really. All five lions were parked in the water, looming and huge in comparison to everything else in the area. Reporters had gathered as well, but none of them dared approach when the lions began to come to life upon their pilots getting closer.

They couldn't very well go wading into the water in their uniforms, and so they each took turns as their lions stretched forward and opened their mouths to let them aboard. With the exception of Lance, who held red by one of her teeth and remained standing on the edge of her mouth as she rose back up into sitting. He waved down at the crowd while it happened, throwing out a final wink before he ducked inside.

Keith rolled his eyes.

He was the last to board, black rumbling in greeting as he made his way to the pilot's chair and took a seat.

"We're already in formation," Pidge supplied over the coms.

"Good. We take off in formation then," Keith issued, comforted some by black's familiar presence and the feel of her controls in his hands. "In three, two, one."

Careful not to take out anyone or anything on the beach, they all kept their thrusters low as they pulled up out of the water. It wasn't until they were floating well above the tree line that Keith issued "full thrusters" and took off into the clouds. With practiced ease, his fellow paladins flew at his sides, the sight of the green and red lions in his side windshields calming Keith even more.

This was fine. He could do this.

"At our current speed, we'll be arriving in Algeria in roughly… five minutes," Hunk supplied.

"What does our landing sight look like?" Keith asked.

Allura hummed while a blue coded map popped up on each of their displays. "The city is rather crowded, so we likely won't have much of a place to land outside of the sea…"

"What about here? Right outside the GBI's headquarters?" Keith asked, pointing and zooming in on a section of open space around the official building.

"It's labelled as a garden, so I didn't know if that was feasible…" Allura said uncertainly.

"That's where we're landing," Keith said simply. No way was he going to somehow make his way through the city to the GBI headquarters. They'd land in the closest open space and that was that.

Lance laughed over the coms. "I like your style, Bossman."

"It'll certainly make a statement," Hunk added.

"They'll be running around like chickens with their heads cut off, not knowing what we're doing," Pidge said rather sadistically.

"That's not… the best way to look at it…" Shiro said from Blue's com. "We want to be making a positive impression, remember."

"Yeah, but also the impression that they better not mess with us," Lance added.

"Less that, more friendly," Hunk corrected.

"I'm plenty friendly!"

"I'm not," Keith muttered.

"Well, you'd better pretend," Allura scolded. "This whole thing has turned out to be much more important diplomatically than we had originally intended, so I expect everyone to be on their best, and friendliest, behavior."

"Ugh, but humans  _suck_ ," Pidge groaned, Matt's barking laugh echoing softly through her com at the same time.

"Maybe so, but that is quite beside the point," Allura decided. "Matt, are you prepared?"

"Yessir, Ma'am," he replied.

"Keith?"

He shrugged. "Sure, I guess."

Allura sighed. "Why do you always do this?"

"Do what?" he asked, honestly offended by her tone.

"Make me worried you're not prepared and then do perfectly fine. It'd help me considerably if you'd just be honest about how ready you are."

"I am honest," Keith defended. "What else do you want me to say?"

"She wants you to be confident!" Lance supplied. "You know, ready to take on the masses!"

"But I'm not…"

Allura sighed again, while Lance giggled.

"The city is up ahead," Hunk interjected then. "How would you like to approach the landing sight?"

Keith surveyed the map again. "There are a lot of tall buildings around the garden. We'll stay above, come around from the west, and drop down directly to land."

"Wow, you really do want to surprise them," Pidge said. "I've scanned the gardens for human bio signals and there doesn't appear to be any aside from a few lingering around the building exits. We should be safe to land."

"Make sure you're monitoring those signals," Keith said. "The last thing we need to do is accidentally crush someone."

"Yeah, let's not," Shiro agreed.

Focusing in on their formation, the stayed up among the clouds as they arced around to come from the west. Once they were within a few miles of the landing sight, Keith adjusted his thrusters to begin descending. Which took only seconds at their speed. But as they had very little actual landing space with which to maneuver, coming in fast before pulling up into place seemed the best method so as to prevent them flying too close to the building in the surrounding area.

Once they were above the garden, Keith quit his thrusters almost entirely, Black more than capable of landing on her feet as they dropped to the ground below. The others did the same beside him, the ground beneath them trembling as their lions made relatively hard landings, or so they were probably interpreted to the humans observing. But it'd been pretty soft in comparison to a lot of what they did on a regular basis.

"Have green repair the damage," Keith issued as the lions shifted so their haunches were in the air, their mouths leaning down to release their paladins.

Standing, Keith straightened his jacket one last time, ran through his speech checklist, and headed out. No use procrastinating, after all. Might as well get it over with as soon as possible.

It was a cloudy day, but the sun still kept everything relatively warm. The lions had left destroyed patches of grass and disrupted Earth where they'd landed, but with a flash of Green's eyes, the grass was creeping back into place and growing up as it had been before.

The other paladins converged beside Keith as he marched forward through the main aisle of the garden toward the building, while Shiro and Matt came up behind. Already people were climbing over each other to get out the doors to see them, but Keith paid such things no mind. Mostly because he was quite accustomed, at that point, to crowds parting as he approached. Lance said it was the cape. Pidge said it was the mean look on his face. Keith didn't care which was true.

He  _was_  somewhat bothered by the flashes of cameras as well as the shouting from the reporters as they flushed into the garden and ran up to meet them. But that wasn't so out of the ordinary.

It was just as they were leaving the garden and headed up the stairs that lead into the building that a group of more official looking personages came out to meet them. They were red-faced and breathing hard, which humored Keith slightly.

"H-Hello," one of them greeted. "I- We're- We're here to escort you to the hall," she said, taking a deep breath as she did.

"Good," Keith said shortly, supplying little else and thus leaving their escort to flounder for a moment before they turned and hastily headed back into the building.

A few of the reporters shouted their names and Keith cast Lance a look, warning him not to answer. Which earned him an eye roll.

The building was air-conditioned, which was nice, and their escort opened all the doors as they walked through. They seemed to have trouble keeping up with Keith's quick pace, but did well enough in not getting too flustered.

"No, uh, S-Sir-"

"Commander Kogane," Keith corrected.

"Yes, right, Commander, we thought that perhaps you all could enter from the back of the stage, which is around this way, and-"

"That's the conference room?" Keith asked, gesturing to the large double-doors ahead of them.

"Well, it's the ball room, the conference room wasn't big enough to-"

"But that's where we're headed?"

"Yes, but-"

Keith was not going in through the back. Maybe it made him undiplomatic not to play along with their games at theatrics, but he really didn't have the patience for it. And becoming the leader of Voltron hadn't helped his tolerance any, as now he could just walk in however he wanted and no one could really do anything about it. Allura and Shiro had lectured him at one point about his abrasive entrances, but it hadn't stuck and so they'd given up.

It hadn't helped that Hunk had pointed out that Keith's direct, no nonsense manner was probably better in some circumstances. He was the commander of Voltron after all, an elite military weapon. While Hunk and Allura could handle the finer details of diplomacy, giving off a strong, sterner presence on Keith's part likely wasn't a bad thing.

Which, of course, had convinced Keith not to care at all about how he entered rooms, much to Allura's annoyance and Lance's amusement.

Not even giving their escort the time to recover from his rejection of their plan, Keith approached the doors. And as he was reaching out to take hold of the handles, Lance grabbed his shoulder to stop him. Before he and Pidge passed him on either side and took a handle each. Together, they pushed the doors open, stepping aside as Keith regained his momentum and marched through.

There was another set of doors across the room where others had been entering from the side, which meant that none had expected the large doors on the far end to suddenly swing open. As a result, nearly everyone whipped around in surprise to look at them.

The whole room, which was large enough to justify sweeping, tiered ceilings and an imposing chandelier, fell silent.

But Keith was used to that too. With his cape sweeping out behind him, he stalked in. Pidge and Lance rejoined him at his sides, the whole party keeping form as they made their way toward the stage on the opposite side.

The sound of gasps and whispering began around them and spread throughout the whole room, those who had been sitting down at their tables quickly standing in order to get a better look. More than likely, it was the sight of Allura that was causing the shock and awe, but it was an issue Keith had no intention of addressing at that point in time.

Instead, he put his focus solely on the stage, ignoring any and all he passed. He didn't care what county they were the leaders of or how important they thought themselves to be. Even if the intention was to form friendly relations, none of these people even registered on his radar of what was important.

The stage was already lit and set up with a mic and official GBI podium. That aside, it was empty, which worked well-enough. Taking the stairs on the left up, Keith pulled out in front to lead his party. He was getting to the part he hated most, but the faster he got it over with, the faster he could fly back to Cuba with Lance.

With an unintentional flourish of his cape (Coran said it was the lightness of the fabric), he stepped up to the podium and stared rather harshly down at the people still gawking at them. His friends arced into position around him, Shiro and Matt taking either end.

Adjusting the mic quickly, Keith took an audible breath before speaking.

"Please take your seats," he said, his tone chilly. But at least one of Allura's lessons had sunk in, and that was the use of polite words when he gave orders. It made it sound more like a request, she'd explained, despite the fact that it definitely wasn't.

For a moment, the crowd remained still, about half of the room looking between each other. Before a few finally gave in and sat down, which inspired the rest to slowly follow despite some confusion and anger on the part of Keith's attitude.

"Thank you," he said as soon as the room was totally seated. There had to be roughly five hundred or more people present, which wasn't that many given some of the crowds he'd spoken in front of previously.

Laying his hands atop the podium, Keith allowed the silence to linger for a moment—it stirred the people listening, he knew, but gave him the time to get his thoughts together, which was what was more important to him.

"I am Commander Keith Kogane of Voltron, which I think most of you are familiar with at this point. But I'll give a brief description of who we are and what we do anyway." If only because it was an easy way to start a speech. "Voltron is an elite weapon made up of five separate ships. It was created by King Alfor of planet Altea ten-thousand years ago. His daughter, Princess Allura" he turned and gestured in her direction, "is the Blue Paladin of Voltron."

Cool, got Allura, who, and what she was out of the way.

Didn't have to explain what they were, seeing as they were on Earth. Another box already checked.

"As Commander, I pilot the head, or black lion, Voltron. Lieutenant Lance McClain pilots the Red lion, Captain Katherine Holt pilots the green lion, and Captain Hunk Garret pilots the yellow lion. Together, we work in tandem to form Voltron." Usually here he'd go on about saving the universe from the Galra and working together with planets in the alliance, but that wasn't exactly relevant.

"Our visit to Earth was intended, but our leaving it hadn't been. Five years ago, when Takashi Shirogane crashed a galra cruiser east of the Garrison Flight School," he nodded in Shiro's direction, "we were swept up into a conflict light years beyond our solar system. Two years ago, that conflict came to a head just outside Earth atmosphere. One month ago, we and the courageous souls serving with the Galactic Alliance ended that ten-thousand year conflict.

"Today, we come to Earth to see our family and friends, but also to welcome Earth and its peoples into a world much vaster than their own." He gestured to Pidge, who nodded and tapped a button on her wrist piece that quickly scanned the room before projecting a map of the known universe across the entire room.

Gasps and exclamations bounced around as a result and Keith waited until they died down some before continuing.

"This is the universe as we know it," he explained. "And this is what the Galra had control over." The blue glowing points that had once been conquered or destroyed lit up yellow.

A few more gasps. Keith continued.

"Earth is here." Their spot in the universe lit up, one of the few remaining blue points amongst the yellow. "Galra ships had already been scouting Earth's sector when we left five years ago. Inevitably, Earth would have been attacked and enslaved. Or worse. Over two-thousand life-bearing planets have been destroyed during the Galra's rule, and over ten-thousand total. Billions of peoples have been enslaved and lost their homes, while billions more were victims. The Kerberos mission six years ago was not lost to pilot error, but to abduction by Galra scouts.

"Takashi Shirogane, who piloted the black lion of Voltron before I did, and Matthew Holt, a current Ambassador for the Alliance, managed to survive. Sam Holt did not."

Behind him, Hunk placed a heavy hand on Pidge's shoulder, while Allura gently touched Matt's arm.

"One death," Keith continued. "That is all humanity has lost to this conflict. One life."

He held up a single finger. "One."

The word sank over the crowd while he gathered his bearings.

"Thousands of entire civilizations have been lost. Five years ago, Princess Allura—who's entire planet and people were destroyed—brought us together to reawaken Voltron. Because it was the only hope the universe had left."

He put his attention back on the map.

"Slowly, we started to take those planets back." One by one, the yellow dots started to turn blue again. "We couldn't save what had been lost, but we did all we could to take back what was left. Together with the planets Voltron freed, we formed the Galactic Alliance, which made it possible to free the universe from Galra control completely." The yellow was soon all blue again.

"This is where we are today." Pidge shut down the map, all focus turning back to Keith. "Humanity is a small piece of what exists out there, and one of the lucky few civilizations who didn't suffer at the hands of Galra. Voltron doesn't come to Earth to protect it this time, but instead to educate on the status of the universe within which Earth exists, and to ask for your cooperation within the Galactic Alliance.

"The war is over, but the recovery will take lifetimes. Earth is not a part of the Galactic Alliance and owes nothing in lieu of what has happened, but Voltron and the Alliance are willing to welcome anyone who is interested in aiding and rebuilding everything that was lost. Ambassador Matthew Holt is here for that very reason." He stepped forward, looking quite striking in his black suit and shirt with his hair pulled back in a low ponytail. "However, Earth is technologically behind most other parts of the universe, and so it is a commitment on both sides if the desire to be involved is to be realized.

"I am the Commander of Voltron, a weapon that exists to defend the peoples of the universe, but it is only through cooperation that the damage that's been done can be healed. We are not here to demand Earth's involvement. We are not here to threaten. We are not here to intimidate. We are here because we are humans who have spent the last five years away from home, defending planets that couldn't possibly defend themselves. Earth was lucky. And we are honored to be here today, thankful that our home didn't suffer the way so many others did.

"We appreciate that you all went out of your way to attend today, and hope that, in the future, we can all work together on a scale that is both human and intergalactic." He nodded his head lightly. "Thank you."

He knew he couldn't very well just walk off the stage—that would make any ruffled feathers he'd calmed go right back up again. But he could give the mic over to someone else.

Taking a step back, he nodded to Lance, who took his place.

"We'll take questions now, if you'd like," Lance said into the mic. Keith slouched some behind him, thankful to no longer be in the spotlight.

The room was in an uproar for a minute, while those working for the GBI made attempts to calm it back down. It took some time, but soon one of their escorts was able to start filtering questions.

"How can we know for certain that Earth is safe?" A woman asked. Keith didn't bother paying any attention to who she was or what country she was from. Instead, he closed his eyes and was content to listen.

"Well, that's the frank part of all this," Lance replied. "From your end, there's no sure way to guarantee Earth's safety. But four out of five of Voltron's paladins are humans. We have families here, friends. Like the attack two years ago, we will do everything in our power to protect this planet, just as we've done for countless others. As of now, the threat level to Earth is low."

"This… Voltron is the most powerful weapon in the known Universe?" A man asked. "And it's piloted by you young people? How old are any of you, even?"

It was questions like these that proved why Lance was better at answering than Keith, who'd already be angry. Lance, while not always knowing how to be diplomatic, was the best at the "show" part of what they did.

"We  _are_  young," Lance agreed. "Prior to our involvement in the war, those of us from Earth were Garrison students. However, we've had extensive training and real-world situations that far outweigh most of the experiences a majority of the military officials here on Earth have gone through. We're more than qualified to hold the positions that we do."

"How are the paladins of Voltron chosen, exactly?" Another woman. "Based on the records released from the Garrison, you were only seventeen when you left Earth. One of you was only  _fifteen_. And your Commander was a dropout. Excuse any rudeness, but I don't quite understand how that qualifies any of you to pilot any weapon considered the most powerful in the universe."

"Well, first and foremost, paladins are not picked based on resume-like qualifications. Which may seem disconcerting to many of you. The lions of Voltron choose their paladins, and so we had no choice but to become deserving of our titles. You may disagree with the method, but we have managed to do what we set out to, dropouts in charge or no."

A few people laughed. Most didn't.

"I'm sorry, the  _lions_  choose their pilots?"

"The lions of Voltron were created using altean engineering and alchemy. They are made of a special, reality travelling comet that is infused with quintessence, the essence of all things in the universe. They are not just machines, but living creatures with wills of their own. So yes, the lions choose and we go along with their choices."

"It doesn't seem entirely plausible that having that much power, you'd simply come to Earth expecting nothing…"

Lance laughed. "Trust me, we have a lot bigger things to worry about than Earth. Whether humanity is interested in joining the Alliance or not is but a blip in the lives we'll be leading. We're not interested in forcing any of you to do anything."

"Would it be appropriate if I were to join you on stage?"

A question that surprised all of them and had Keith cracking his eyes open.

"Ah… certainly," Lance replied, managing to throw in a laugh so as to counter his confusion.

A man jogged up toward the stage then. He was dressed in a well-fitted suit and appeared quite young in comparison to many of the others present.

"I'm the Prime Minister of Canada," he explained as he met Lance on stage, the two shaking hands as names were exchanged. He sported a friendly smile and sounded generally at ease. "I don't know if any of you realize, but when Earth was attacked two years ago, we could see what was happening from Canada. Not, you know, with our eyes—you were all a bit too far for that—but we did get a… generous view of the battle with our live scanners."

"Ah, right, of course," Lance said simply, none of them having any idea where this was going.

"Frankly, it was terrifying to watch!" he admitted, going a bit paler as he did. "We… couldn't do anything to help, let alone stop what you were dealing with. Perhaps it's because it happened right above our homes, but you're all very well-respected in my country."

"It's true," Pidge muttered. Seeing as her home was in Canada, she'd probably know after having returned.

"And so we wanted to present you each with the Canadian Victoria Cross, the highest military honor we could bestow to those going beyond the call of duty when faced with a hostile force. We're… breaking protocol here, as none of you have served under or with a Canadian military command, nor is it being awarded posthumously. However, given the circumstances, it was decided the award was appropriate despite criteria not met."

"Oh…" Lance said, all of them watching as someone who likely worked with the prime minister came up on stage carefully holding a stack of five velvet boxes. "Well, we're honored to accept," Lance eventually said, his smile good-natured as he bowed his head.

They'd been through numerous awards ceremonies, most of which had typically been prearranged. But despite this happening without such prior planning or formal pomp and circumstance, they each knew how to properly behave. Keith was the first to step forward to receive the medal, which was carefully pinned to his uniform below his ribbon racks. He shook hands with the prime minister before stepping back, the same actions taking place with each of the active paladins. Even Allura received one, despite not even being a citizen of Earth, let alone Canada.

All the while cameras were flashing from the press. But that wasn't so surprising.

"We would also like to present the paladins with an award," someone called out then, the informality of it all somewhat humorous to those in the crowd.

The shout had come just as Canada's prime minister had been leaving the stage. An older woman stepped up, an American flat pinned to her suit.

Of course America would step in as quickly as they could, having been shown up by Canada already.

The President of the United States awarded them each with the Army Medal of Honor, as the Army was the military branch directly involved with the American sector of the Garrison. The medals were slipped over their heads, hanging down the centers of the uniforms.

Which established a pattern. It seemed there were two types of leaders at the conference—those who wanted to make nice with the paladins by presenting them with awards and those that were sour they hadn't thought to do the same on such short notice.

By the time the whole thing was finally over, they were each weighed down with at least thirty new medals, ten paper awards that came in both scroll and book form, and five out-of-character awards that were another object entirely.

It might have been humorous, looking at them, were the situation not, in fact, a serious one.

"Wow, thanks!" Lance said once he finally returned to the mic (it'd been at least two hours). His statement elicited a few laughs, the tension that had previous permeated the room having dissolved as a result of so many world leaders happily coming up to express their approval. "Didn't expect such a warm welcome, really." Which only included the countries that had been generous with them, but that went unsaid. "And, uh, I know a lot of you still have questions to ask, and we'll get to them, but I am going to turn the mic over to Ambassador Holt, who's going to speak on behalf of the Galactic Alliance."

Stepping back, Lance didn't stop until he was beside Keith. Matt was speaking a second later, but Keith was a bit too frazzled from all the hands he'd been shaking and people he'd met to really listen.

"You did really well, you know," Lance said quietly as he leaned in close.

Were he being honest, however, Keith had already forgotten most of what he'd said.

"Uh, thanks," he whispered back.

"Seriously, that whole stern, scary, tell them all the bad stuff attitude before sweeping in and saying how great we were without  _actually_  saying it? I liked it." Lance leaned in much closer then. "I was kinda turned on, really."

Keith whipped his head up to stare at him, eyes wide as his face flushed. "Lance!" he hissed.

Which had the other giggling. "I'm just joking with you," he murmured. "Your face was priceless."

Huffing, Keith pushed back on the heated explosion that had washed up through his whole chest. "You're the worst," he mumbled out.

"You love it."

Keith hummed noncommittally.

But Lance was right. He did love it. Loved it way,  _way_  too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song was Love on the Brain by Rihanna. I recommend a listen, it'll really give you a mood for that scene. 
> 
> Got a taste of all the other paladins here, how they've matured and how they interact. Kind of a breather chapter I think, before we get back into Lance and Keith. But like, Keith, my guy, my dude, you are in so deep, lol.


	7. Tears Don't Sparkle

"Lance,  _stop_!" It was the closest Keith ever got to whining, his low-toned, rather shy begging echoing through the coms as he and Lance flew west, back toward Cuba after a long day with too much talking and too many people.

"I can't!" Lance replied with a laugh. "You were honestly so good! None of those assholes would dare even step in your way after that speech. And that glare you were always wearing? It was like talking to an icicle. Which is funny to me, because I know you're not like that at all, but-"

"Lance, I'm serious," Keith growled through gritted teeth, his cheeks stinging painfully due to how long he'd been blushing at Lance's persistent words. There were certain things Keith knew he was good at and could take compliments for, and certain compliments he could handle better than others. Lance was giving him the exact opposite of everything within that comfort zone.

"So am I! Allura is right, you really should be more confident—you're a lot better at these sorts of things than you give yourself credit for."

Why? Because he managed to give a speech without tripping over his words and talk to people without giving them the total cold shoulder? Lance, Allura, Shiro, all of them were clearly living in some other reality than Keith was.

"Just  _stop_ already," Keith muttered, thankful that the sliver of land ahead of them was Cuba and maybe being back would get Lance onto another subject. They'd all parted ways upon the conference ending, leaving Keith victim to Lance's constant praise without the defense of anyone else interjecting.

"And to think the whole thing was broadcasted live—everyone on Earth probably saw you. And me. But mostly you. Bet all those garrison guys that used to whisper about you are shittin' bricks now and-"

"Lance?"

"What?"

"We need to land."

"Oh yeah, right."

Lance was always like this after some big party or conference. Unlike Keith, he thrived on social interaction, as if the more people he was around, the more energetic he became. Keith couldn't relate as he was the exact opposite. Which left him exhausted while Lance bounced around his lion's cockpit like a kid that'd eaten too much candy.

There were very few people Keith could stand to be around for long periods of time without becoming too drained, all of whom lived in the castle with him. Sometimes he wondered if it was just because they all knew each other so well. But then other times he thought that maybe it was all just part of what made them so compatible as a team.

They made a soft landing, careful when they settled down into the water not to cause too many waves. There were a few people on the beach, most of whom jumped at the sight of them before beginning to gawk or take pictures. Keith willfully decided to ignore it, too tired to care that people were watching him, or, rather, too tired to acknowledge it. Maybe if he ignored them, it'd be like they weren't there.

Leaving his chair, he grabbed up his cape and all the bits and pieces of his uniform that he'd wrapped in it. Being in that ball room with all those people had been hot, stuffy, and miserable, which had left Keith stripping down as soon as he'd been back in Black. In only his slacks, shoes, and white t-shirt, he was far more underdressed, but considerably more comfortable for it.

Black had her jaws held open as he headed out into the soft light of the setting sun, beginning to lower him down toward the beach as he gazed out toward Red. Which was when his thoughts, as well as Black's movements, came to a pause.

Inside Red's half-open mouth, Lance was hopping around on one leg whileyanking his shoe off the other. Like Keith, he'd stripped down to his pants and shirt, the only difference being that he had a long-sleeved t-shirt instead.

"What are you doing?" Keith yelled out to him, balancing his rolled up cape and uniform on his hip as he cocked a skeptical brow.

"What's it-" Lance yanked off his other shoe, "-look like?"

"Stripping for the beach-goers?" Keith shouted back.

"Ha, ha!" Lance rolled his eyes before going to the side edge of Red's mouth. With both hands above his head holding the edge of his lion's top jaw, he balanced his socked feet on the bottom before beginning to swing his hips dangerously forward and back. There was a devious grin stretching across his lips.

"Lance, don't," Keith warned, knowing exactly what Lance was thinking. "You jump down into the water and you'll cause a bigger scene than when we first got here."

"Sounds like somebody's scared," he taunted, which ruffled Keith's feathers despite how he knew he shouldn't be giving in.

"That's not the problem here," Keith said sternly.

"Sounds like something a scardy-cat would say," Lance replied immaturely.

Keith glared.

Continuing to swing forward and back, Lance waggled his eyebrows, which only got him Keith shaking his head in response.

Until he swung a bit too far forward, leg flailing as his socked foot slipped out from under him. With a desperate wave of his arms, he tried to right himself, but failed.

"Lance!" Keith yelled out, but he was too late. With a strangled yelp, Lance was falling forward into the empty air while Keith was dropping his cape in order to scramble to the edge. Just as he stuck his head out over the water, Lance's body was splashing in below and disappearing beneath the waves.

While Keith's heart beat hard and fast in his chest.

_"Not much more exciting, but it's got to be better than being in the infirmary all the time, right?" Keith found himself asking. And while he hadn't expected a response, the fact that he hadn't gotten one still felt like a hammer blow to the chest. Coran and Allura had decided that a change in scenery—perhaps something more familiar—might do Lance some good. And so they'd decided to finally move him back to his own quarters._

_No one had said anything about Keith taking it upon himself to lift Lance and place him in the levichair before pushing him through the halls to their quarters. It'd been a few weeks at that point of Keith basically being Lance's caregiver. Coran had helped out at first—with reading the machines and teaching Keith what to do—but now it was basically Keith's ballgame. Which was… fine._

_He didn't have a lion. Didn't have a reason to be there really, except for Lance._

_"And knowing you, I bet you're practically dying for a shower or something." They'd been giving him sponge baths in the infirmary, but nothing that had been overly invasive or exposing. Not in that big, huge room where it'd been bad enough having a catheter and bedpan in use almost all the time. They'd kind of gotten past such things by then, Keith knowing that when Lance made the small effort to reach out and tug on his sleeve that he needed help._

_But there were times, still, where he didn't even do that…_

_Like he was just… somewhere else._

_No, Keith couldn't think about such things. They were making progress, weren't they? Lance wasn't in the infirmary anymore, he was in his own quarters. And Keith was the only one needed to take care of him now._

_Small steps._

_"Maybe not a shower," Keith decided as he pushed Lance's levichair closer to the bathroom door. A bath would be easier, probably. At least from Keith's end. It likely didn't matter to Lance either way, given his… condition._

_"Just wait here a second," Keith found himself saying as he parked the levichair and went around into Lance's bathroom. He knew talking was… stupid, really. Because Lance wasn't going to respond, which made it more like talking to a wall. But Keith couldn't help it, really. Lance had always been so talkative, so full of life. Maybe if he heard Keith talking enough, he'd just…_

_Wake up._

_Or maybe Keith kept talking for his own sanity, holding up conversations that he never would have put the effort into before._

_Flicking on the light, he quickly took stock of everything he'd need before setting it on the side of the tub and turning on the water. With the plug activated and water lukewarm, he let it begin filling before he headed back into the other room to get Lance._

_He was exactly where Keith had left him. Dressed in a looser version of the cryopod suit with his eyes glazed over, unfocused, and his hair sticking out yet flattened from too much grease buildup. He was thin, the suit baggy, and appeared even smaller with nothing hanging off the front of the chair aside from his left knee. Sunken eyes, cheek bones too pronounced, skin lacking in his typical color._

_But Keith swallowed back his grief and pushed forward._

_Somewhere in that body, broken as it was, Lance remained. He just… had to keep waiting._

_"C'mon," Keith murmured as he bent down and wrapped his arms around Lance's back and up under his rear. Before lifting him easily from the chair._

_He was… so much lighter._

_There was no assistance from Lance, which Keith was used to at that point. His one good arm hung uselessly while his head lolled forward onto Keith's shoulder._

_Carting him into the bathroom, Keith set him on the edge of the counter, careful to keep him balanced as he reached down and began to roll the cryosuit from the bottom up. It was all Lance was wearing—mostly for the sake of convenience—and Keith could basically feel the chill on Lance's bare skin in the form of goosebumps that began to pop up all over his body._

_"Sorry, the counter's probably cold," Keith said as he slipped the gown over Lance's head before dropping it down his arm. Despite the fact that Lance had gotten a new gown every day, it still felt filthy, and so Keith didn't care about dropping it carelessly to the floor. More concerned with getting Lance warm, he lifted him again before going to the tub._

_Ever so carefully, he bent down and gingerly placed him in the water. His whole body twitched in Keith's hold as he did, but there was no reaction otherwise. Once he felt Lance was safely propped up against the back of the tub, he reached out and turned off the water._

_It was clear—lacking in the foggy minerals Earth water possessed—and shifted slightly as it settled around Lance's chest. A few loose drops pinged from the faucet into the water._

_"I'll have to learn how to shave your face too," Keith said as he got down on his knees beside the tub and shucked off his jacket. "You've got a lot of stubble, which I bet you hate." He removed his t-shirt lastly, knowing it'd get wet if he didn't. "I don't have to shave, personally, so I'll probably screw up at first," he continued, before grabbing the pitcher-like jug he'd left on the ledge, "so don't get mad if I cut you."_

_Nothing. Lance didn't even stare. His eyes were that… empty._

_Scooping up some of the water, Keith ignored how his hand shook as he carefully cradled Lance's head forward and poured the water over his head—slowly, carefully, quite a few times until he felt Lance's hair was wet enough to shampoo._

_"You have so many products in here," Keith complained as he stared curiously down at the bottle he'd decided on previously. If only because it looked kind of similar to the altean shampoo he used in his own room. "I hope I have the right one. If I don't, it's your own fault for not putting labels on all this stuff."_

_The gel sudsed up properly as he massaged it carefully into Lance's hair. At one point a streak had tried to make its way into Lance's eye, and so Keith had had to wipe it away. Trying to shield Lance's brow, hold his head up, and rinse his hair had proven to be relatively challenging, and had resulted in Lance's lashes fluttering in pain as some of the soap had made it past Keith's attempted defenses._

_Yet, even that small response made Keith feel a little bit better, even as he apologized._

_More than likely, Lance didn't use bar soap, but Keith didn't know what of the many bottles around the bathroom was body wash, and so he got the same treatment to his skin that Keith did. Albeit with a luffa, because it was there and one of the few things Keith did recognize. It was the most thorough washing Lance had gotten since his accident, and so Keith made sure to do as good a job as possible, even if that meant trying to lean Lance forward over his right arm while he washed his back with the left._

_There was a lot that had to be done, really, some of which might have made Keith uncomfortable had he not been taking care of Lance for a few weeks already. Discomfort had no place in those moments, or so Keith had convinced himself. Personal it was, yes, but leaving Lance dirty in places Keith was too shy to wash would be worse, and so he'd gotten over such obstacles by force—as he did most things. Lance's wellbeing was his topmost priority. He—Keith—couldn't do much, really, but of what he could accomplish, he'd do all that he could._

_"You probably use conditioner or something," Keith said once he'd rinsed Lance down. "I dunno where it is though. I'll figure out what all your stuff is before next time." Reaching out, he gently slid Lance's hair back from his brow to his temple. "It's frizzy hair till then I guess."_

_Sighing, Keith leaned back, looking Lance up down once more to make sure he hadn't missed anything._

_"Oh, I forgot a towel," he muttered a second later, before pushing himself to his feet. "Be right back."_

_The towels were reloaded into a shoot in a corner of Keith's bedroom, so he assumed Lance's was the same. Leaving the bathroom, he headed quickly to the back where he could see a cabinet door set into the wall in the exact same fashion as Keith was familiar with. It opened easily as he slid his hand beneath the center, revealing a stack of fluffy white towels, new bedsheets, and a few wash cloths._

_Taking one of the towels, Keith was almost back to the bathroom when it occurred to him that he hadn't gotten Lance a change of clothes either. Probably best to get him covered as quickly as possible out of the bath, lest he get a chill or something._

_Going quickly to the closet, he pulled it open and was glad to see that Lance was quite organized in how he kept his things. Three blue robes hung to the left while his multiple sets of pajamas were folded atop a drawer set on the right. His blue lion slippers were on the floor, but they'd be of little use at that point._

_Grabbing up a bed shirt, a pair of slacks, and yanking free a robe, Keith slung them all over his arm before he closed the closet and headed back toward the bathroom._

_He was almost through the door when a light splash, like a hand slapping water, caught his attention. Slipping in, he called out, "Lance?"_

_There was a pause as Keith took in the room, a heavy, elongated note like the shocking suspense used in horror movies. Like the terrible fear he got every time an alarm went off while he was infiltrating a galra ship. The weightless terror one felt when dreaming while also falling out of bed._

_Like his stomach was being vacuumed up through his throat._

_Everything in his arms dropped to the floor immediately, Keith's heart coming to a cracking halt as a painful breath was ripped from his lungs. Eyes wide, he paused for only a single helpless, confused second before he was rushing forward, his voice straining as his blood pumped loudly in his ears._

_"_ _**Lance** _ _!" he screamed, his voice unaccustomed to such panic and so coming out cracked as he reached his violently shaking arms into the water. "Lance, no!"_

_**No!** _

_Not caring how rough he was, he yanked Lance up out of the water from where he'd sunk in over his head. Part of Keith was panicking because he'd done this. He'd left Lance alone and somehow this had happened and he'd messed up and-_

_But then Lance was gasping, his head falling back as he breathed in the open air despite the water that was dragging down his skin and hair in seeping layers._

_"Lance, oh god, Lance," Keith was saying, still shaking uncontrollably even as he held the other boy up. Even as Lance's chest heaved for breath after breath, as if he'd never known air in his life._

_Until, like a pot of the verge of boiling, Lance's voice came bursting from forth as desperately as he breathed._

_"No!" he yelled, his one good arm coming up to vainly push back on Keith's chest. "No!"_

_"Lance?!" Keith didn't understand, too stunned by the whole thing for his brain to keep up. So shocked that even though Lance couldn't possibly have the strength to push him away, Keith faltered anyway, allowing the thin, fragile body in his arms to slip a bit back into the water._

_Before he was scrambling to keep a better hold on him._

_"Go away!" Lance shrieked, his tone like nails on a chalkboard. "Get_ _**away** _ _from me!"_

_"Lance-"_

_"_ _**Get away!** _ _"_

_"No!" Keith screamed back, finally getting ahold of himself enough to find some kind of ground. Lance was pushing back on him with his one hand, scratching at his chest and trying to pull back toward the water even as Keith bodily dragged him from the tub. Until Lance's whole body was struggling with what little was possible, the heel of his hand coming up to slam Keith hard in the bottom of his chin._

_The blow had Keith seeing stars, his head knocking back as he fell, dropping Lance in the process. But they were clear of the tub and so as Keith toppled against the cabinets, Lance fell gracelessly to the floor._

_For a moment, the ringing in Keith's ears was so loud that he heard nothing, instead helpless to do anything but watch as Lance writhed atop the tile, his one good arm reaching over his body to try and grab the ledge of the tub. But despite his clawing attempts, he couldn't pull himself back into the water. Instead, he left deep gouges where he clawed the side, before his strength finally gave out, leaving him wet, naked, and sobbing on the bathroom floor._

_"Just let me die," were the first words that registered in Keith's ears. A horrible soundtrack to the scene he'd just been knocked into. "I just want to_ _**die** _ _."_

_Lance's pleading voice inched around Keith like tightening vines, holding him down and keeping him motionless. Paralyzed as he watched Lance flop aimlessly in the puddle of water dripping from his own body. His one remaining arm was like a hook in how it drew Keith's fractured attention, curling in toward Lance's chest as he leaned his head back._

_As his sobs turned into screams so piercing that Keith felt as though every piece of glass in the room, every tile, every bulb, would shatter._

_But they didn't. Instead, Lance's scream died back into a destitute sob, while his arm sagged out beside him before dropping harshly to the floor._

_Keith didn't know that he'd started crying too. That he'd tried to curl up away from Lance, as far against the cabinets as he could get. None of it registered; none of it he felt more acutely than the sound of Lance's deprived mourning._

_Hair scraping against the floor, Lance turned his head in Keith's direction, his blue eyes draining tears and so widely intense—so crazed—that Keith felt as though he were looking at a feral animal, not a human being. The edges of his nails were bleeding because of how desperately he'd been scaling the tub, and they seemed more like talons as Lance moved his arm in Keith's direction. His fingers curled against the floor, as though wanting to hook into place, and Keith unconsciously pulled his knees up closer to his chest._

_"Keith," Lance rasped out, the muscles in his hand straining and trembling as he tried to claw closer. "_ _**Keith** _ _!"_

_"_ _**Help me** _ _!"_

_Keith shook his head, fingers tangled in his hair as he turned away and tried not to hear it. Tried not to realize what Lance was asking of him despite knowing full well the implication. He was left gasping for air, the room closing in. Leaving him just as trapped to the floor as Lance._

_"H-Help me," Lance sobbed out brokenly, his chest bowing forward as though he were trying to move, body shifting a bit as his remaining knee pushed back. But he was weak, and wet, and his strength was waning in the same way his fingers lost their tension, his arm once again seeping into motionlessness against the floor._

_"Please," he wept, his breath choppy and desperate. "Keith._ _**Please** _ _._

_"Put me b-back."_

_The water in the tub was still sloshing._

_"Put me back the way I_ _**was** _ _."_

_Keith screwed his eyes shut._

_"Just let me_ _**die** _ _."_

The waves were pretty tame despite the lions having just landed, and so Lance was bursting back out of the water only seconds after having dropped himself in. Pushing his hair up out of his eyes, he shook some of the water away as he glanced up at Keith.

And smiled.

"Woops!" he called out, before wading onto his back and releasing a short laugh.

Sighing, Keith rolled his eyes and swallowed back on the momentary panic that came along whenever Lance did something particularly stupid.

"Well, c'mon then!" Lance called a second later.

Keith cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

"C'mon!" Lance repeated, before slapping the water. "Or are you too chicken-shit?"

"Fuck you!"

Lance laughed again, before he took a deep breath and dove back under the water. He disappeared like a sliver fish beneath the waves, leaving Keith to make a decision.

He was going to get wet anyway, he supposed.

Giving in, Keith yanked off his shoes, socks, and rolled up his pant legs—all within seconds—before leaning out just long enough to get a view of the water and what lay below. Before he pulled himself up onto the edge of Black's mouth and jumped.

Maybe Shiro was right—Lance really was a bad influence on him.

The water felt like a thousand needles stinging his skin as he hit, which might have been more shocking had he not dealt with plenty worse before. Instead, he was easily able to adapt, foggy bubbles surrounding him as he opened his eyes and pumped his arms against the water trying to suck him down.

Breath expertly held, he twisted around, trying to find Lance. The water was too deep for him to see the bottom, especially with the sunlight waning, and so there was nothing really but shadowy blues and greens outlining the lions' bodies and legs, which were like pillars surging up nearby.

There was a tug on his hair from the back, Keith whipping around only to come face to face with that telltale smirk.

Keith's hairband was stretching around Lance's fingers like some kind of prize, which had Keith surging forward to retrieve it.

As if he'd been born beneath the waves, Lance slithered off, legs kicking skillfully as he danced out of Keith's reach. Keith, who now had nothing to hold his hair out of his face and was already shoving it back as it floated across his vision.

Lance circled him, bubbles streaming out from between his lips as he laughed.

Which had Keith smiling, and taking in air when he shouldn't have.

Kicking upward, he surged to the surface, coughing pathetically as he spit the salt water away and pushed back on the heavy curtain of hair dragging across his face.

"Give me my hair tie back," he demanded when Lance burst up nearby. He couldn't yet see well because of the water still draining down his face, but he turned to Lance anyway.

"What? No!" Lance cackled, pushing himself onto his back again. A larger than normal wave managed to get past the lions without fully breaking up, which resulted in Keith being put off balance before he could even really try and go after Lance.

Not that he stood a chance at catching Lance in the water anyway.

Instead, he watched as Lance's socked feet vanished beneath the water's surface once again. Resigned to his fate, Keith took a deep breath before diving back in as well. Arms pushing him deeper while his legs kicked out behind him, he blinked against the water until his vision adjusted, but even so, Lance was nowhere in sight. He swam a bit deeper, before gliding upright and twisting. Searching.

But blue shadows were all he could see.

Until a gentle touch of fingers grazed the back of his arm, sending a startled shock through Keith's whole body. But he knew it was Lance—had expected to be caught—and so he did nothing aside from close his eyes as that touch graduated into a light embrace, Lance's arm wrapping around his shoulders as he was tugged through the water.

Tugged closer, Keith allowing himself to float loosely until his back was colliding with Lance's chest. Until Lance held him so securely from behind that Keith could give up on control and reach up. He slid his hands along Lance's arm, hyper-aware of the muscles shifting beneath the fabric of his long-sleeved shirt and wanting to feel the way they moved. While Lance's free hand was gently shifting up into his floating hair, before he carefully pulled it back out of Keith's face.

Turning his head to the side, Keith touched his nose to Lance's cheek, perhaps unintentionally, but not regretfully. The water was chilly all around them, which only made Keith that much more aware of Lance's heat at his back. The warmth of Lance's chest gliding against his spine, his thighs as he slowly moved them in place, just to keep them steady, but enough that one of his legs slid up between Keith's own. An ankle on his calf, a knee against the inside of his thigh.

Fingers still twining through his hair, while Keith shifted one hand up to Lance's shoulder and held tighter.

Weightless. Floating. For only a second, Keith thought that maybe he'd like to just stay there forever. His mind empty of everything but Lance, his body nothing but how it touched against Lance's own.

Yet even as the fantasy crossed his mind, he knew they were losing it, the moment slipping away as their focus was chipped from one another and instead to the instinctive need to breathe.

They were floating up sideways, Lance having given up in keeping them steady. While Keith's head began to fog and grow heavy.

Until all he knew was Lance's careful hold on him, the rest of the world zeroing away.

Eyes closed, he simply let himself drift.

But like sunlight bursting through a window in the morning, his breath was inevitably being rushed back into his lungs, painfully piercing as Lance pulled them back up to the surface. Eyes wide, Keith gasped at the air while his head rocked with dizziness.

All the while, Lance held him close.

"You're pretty good at staying calm," Lance said into his ear after some moments, his hand combing Keith's drenched hair out of his face, "but you still can't hold your breath as long as me."

"I was fine," Keith managed to cough out, his hold on Lance's arm a little tighter than it had been before. A little more grounded, maybe, in the reality of their situation.

"You'd have started to drown in about three more seconds," Lance assured, while Keith had finally blinked enough water out of his eyes to be able to see again.

"Would not," he defended weakly.

"Sure, sure." Despite how Keith clung, Lance finally pulled away. His arm slipped from around his shoulders, his legs slid from between his own, and suddenly Keith was totally chilled by the water completely surrounding him.

"C'mon," Lance said, before he glided across the surface in the direction of the beach. "Before you really do drown."

"I'm not going to drown," Keith rebuked hotly, before swimming off after Lance. It took them only a few minutes to reach the beach, Keith remaining behind and so able to watch as Lance pulled himself from the water, his white slacks plastered against his well-muscled legs and ass. It was a sight worth being the slightly slower swimmer, Keith decided.

Crowds weren't gathering at the beach as had been done previously, those who had initially gawked having mostly moved on. And so Keith didn't feel overly self-conscious as sat down in the sand beside Lance, who'd flopped down a few seconds prior. Before them, the lions loomed, the sun to the west casting their silver pieces with an orang-ish hue.

"What a weird sight, huh?" Lance asked after a moment.

Keith hummed, somewhat distracted with untangling his hair, which he'd draped over one shoulder.

"Being back on Earth really makes it clear how crazy this whole…paladin thing is."

"Because you didn't realize that before?" Keith asked.

"I just mean- It's like- Okay, perspective." Lance huffed. "Six years ago, where did you see yourself being right now?"

Keith furrowed his brows, before ultimately shrugging. "Dunno."

"What do you mean you don't know?" Lance asked. Keith could feel him staring, but he pretended to keep his focus on his hair. "You were at the Garrison, weren't you? You must have had some idea about where you were going in life."

Keith honestly thought about it. "Not… really." A response he knew Lance wouldn't be satisfied with. "I loved to fly, and Shiro was there. That was all I really needed to know."

"Seriously?" Lance asked. "You just… followed Shiro into the Garrison? Without a second thought?"

Keith shrugged again, finally content that his hair would be somewhat manageable later and so tossed it down his back. "Shiro was all I had," he admitted. "And the Garrison wanted me anyway. It was an easy decision."

"Yeah, but, you must have had goals or  _something_."

"I wanted to be where Shiro was," he said. "So… that's it."

"Keith." His tone was quiet, personal, and so Keith finally met that questioning blue gaze. "Are you  _really_  telling me you never had any, like, 'dreams for the future' or anything like that?"

Keith practically curled his nose up at the idea. "The future always changes," he replied. "And most of the time it never goes the way you want. So I guess I don't really bother thinking about it."

"Not even now?"

"What is there to think of?" Keith asked, before gesturing to the lions. "We know what our future is."

"That's not-" Lance growled in irritation. "Okay, so we're paladins, but that's not the only thing our futures hold."

"Well, then I guess I'll know when I get there," Keith replied, somewhat confused as to why this conversation was clearly irritating Lance so much. No, Keith didn't really look to the future that often. He knew his mission and so he took each moment as it came. He much preferred to be in the "now," not worrying about tomorrow. That was just… stressful. And pointless.

"But- You- Don't you  _want_  anything?"

Keith blinked, not really understanding the question. "What else would I want?" he eventually asked. He had his friends, family. Shiro.  _Lance_. It was so much more than he'd ever had before. More than he'd ever expected to have. Ever fathomed. Sure, there were a few things that he thought of sometimes, like his relationship with Lance, but it didn't matter how many wishful ponderings floated through his head, he wasn't going to act on them.

He already had more than he'd ever imagined he would. No matter how painful it was, he'd never risk any of that. Not for anything.

"Gee, I don't know," Lance remarked shortly, "maybe love, a marriage, kids, a job that doesn't risk our lives every day?"

"That's unrealistic."

"Doesn't mean you can't want it," Lance practically snapped, which had Keith straightening to attention. How had this conversation gone from casual to serious to making Lance angry in only a few moments?

"I realize we'll probably all die out in space somewhere, but that doesn't mean I don't think about other stuff," Lance went on. "And maybe- maybe it's not all unrealistic. Shiro and Allura, they got married. Maybe they'll have babies."

"Maybe that's a bad idea," Keith rebuked.

"Why?!"

"Because!" Did he really have to explain this? "You're right! We probably will die out in space or whatever. So why complicate things any more than they already are?"

"Maybe because we're not machines destined to do one thing before we kick the bucket? Because there's nothing wrong with- with what Allura and Shiro did! With- Just- With being in love and expressing it and wanting more than this shitty universe wants to give us! Christ, Keith! Is that really how you feel?!"

"How else am I supposed to feel?" This felt an awful lot like a trick question. Which told Keith within seconds that whatever this conversation was about, he was probably two steps behind and totally unprepared to handle it.

"You're supposed- You- Being a paladin doesn't mean that I don't still want things for myself," Lance reasoned. "I- I wanna get married someday. I wanna… be with someone for the rest of my life. I wanna… be in love, and show that love, and- just…"

Keith looked away, pushing back on the stabbing pain Lance's words inflicted on his heart.

"And maybe- maybe I wanna have kids. Alfor was a king and a paladin and he still had Allura. So why is it so impossible for us?"

"Well, I guess it's not," Keith said coldly.

"Then why don't you- Ugh, fine, whatever. Just sit there and brood then." Lance turned away.

"I'm not brooding! I just don't feel the same way you do, okay?" His temper was rising, if only because he knew that somehow, someway, Lance was being purposefully difficult. Like he wasn't really saying what he meant. "I like my life the way it is!" With his ragtag family and his purpose and  _Lance_.

He'd wanted more, once. When he'd been a kid. But asking for more had only ever gotten him less. What point was there in wanting when all you ever got was limited to what life was willing to provide?

"Of course you do," Lance said petulantly.

"What do you want me to say?!"

"I don't want you to say anything!" Lance snapped, before surging abruptly to his feet. "There's nothing to say, apparently." Turning on his heel, he began to march off toward the house.

While Keith sat dumbfounded in the sand, feeling acutely like he'd done something wrong, but not having the slightest idea what it could be.

He hated feeling like this. Like he was missing the entire point of what they were discussing.

Growling, he got to his feet as well, before whipping around and stomping after Lance.

"Hey!" he called, easily catching up. "What the hell, Lance?!"

"Just drop it," Lance rebuked without looking back. He flailed his arms at his sides, which gave Keith the perfect in to reach out and grab him around the wrist.

"Stop walking away from me," Keith demanded, halting in his own steps and thus causing Lance to come rather abruptly to a stop as well. Yet still he refused to turn around, which added a sense of helplessness on top of Keith's frustration.

"Lance…" he murmured quietly, tightening his hold around his wrist in the same moment. "What… What did I do wrong?" Or say wrong? Or whatever it was that had set Lance off? They bickered, they fought, but most of the time Keith could figure out the source—he knew Lance well enough to categorize their arguments. But this was different. Occasionally such things happened, where Keith was totally and completely lost.

Ahead of him, Lance's tense shoulders eventually sagged, before he hung his head and sighed.

"Lance?"

"It's nothing," he started, finally turning. His expression had eased of its irritation, which calmed Keith's own nerves immediately. "You didn't do anything wrong," he went on, a small smile creasing his lips. "It's not you I'm angry at."

Keith's brows furrowed.

Which had Lance reaching up and gently cradling his face, Lance's long fingers slipping up into his hair. "I'm angry at myself," he admitted quietly, which didn't really help Keith's confusion much. "Because I want everything and you don't want anything, and I can't be like you."

"You don't- You don't need to be like me…" Keith said quietly, unsure what he should be saying even as he spoke. "I like you… being you."

Lance chuckled, his thumbs lightly stroking Keith's cheeks. "I know you do, Babe."

Keith screwed up his nose at the pet name. It wasn't the first time Lance had used it, but every time he did, Keith never knew what to say. Yet he was fully aware it wasn't anything significant. Lance called Allura Baby Doll sometimes, and Pidge Cutie Pidge-Pie, and Hunk a "fine piece of man-meat." It didn't mean anything.

He knew it didn't mean anything…

"C'mon," Lance said a second later, his hands slipping away and leaving Keith cold. "Let's go." With a final smile, he turned around again and headed back up the beach. Keith stood still a moment longer, watching him go and not feeling particularly better despite the irritation between them having evaporated.

Swallowing hard, he pushed his unease aside and jogged up to walk at Lance's side. Which earned him another light smile.

Not totally sold, but also unwilling to question further, Keith pursed his lips and stayed quiet. But he did lean in a bit closer, comforted further when Lance lazily slung an arm around his shoulders and tugged him against his side.

Truth be told, Keith didn't mind in the least that Lance was a good six inches taller than him these days. It made it easier to tuck himself in beside him, and his own arm fit well in wrapping around Lance's thin waist.

They walked in silence, Keith's heart remaining a bit fast if only because as his nerves over Lance's attitude calmed, a new layer started to buzz at the intruding thoughts pertaining to other subjects. But before he could suffer the full onslaught of questions about Lance's feelings and if he had any, they'd reached the house. Lance's grandparents were sitting outside, while his mother and father stood in the side yard hanging clothes on the lines.

"You're back!" Rose said when she finally spotted them. She came walking swiftly up, Keith slightly taken aback when she reached out and hugged them both around the shoulders. He swayed a bit when she released them, but Lance steadied him before he could embarrass himself.

"We watched the whole thing," she doted. "Well, everything that was broadcasted anyway." She turned to Keith then. "You gave a very nice speech, honey. Kind of scary though. If I didn't already know you, I would have thought you a very different sort of person."

"Uh…" Keith didn't know what to think of that. "Sorry?"

"Oh don't be sorry." She waved him off. "I think it was probably for the better, that you're both so…" She narrowed her eyes at them, as though summing them up, "grown up."

"Aw, Ma, thanks," Lance gushed, sounding far too indulged by the comment. So Keith supposed it must be a good thing.

Rose hummed, patting Lance's cheek affectionately as she did. "Well, you both look, um, wet," she observed. "Why don't you go on up and get changed. Dinner will be ready in about half an hour."

"Alright. Thanks, Ma." Lance leaned in and kissed his mother's cheek.

"Uh, yeah, thank you," Keith said lamely. He decided to definitely  _not_  kiss Rose's cheek as well.

Arms still wrapped around each other, they headed up the stairs into the house, which proved a bit too narrow to accommodate them side by side. Which resulted in some good-natured shoving and squishing as they made their way upstairs, Lance laughing when a well-aimed pinch to the abs finally got Keith to jump away and give Lance the room he needed to reach the bedroom first.

Still, Keith was right on his heels and tripped him as he skidded through the doorway. Lance didn't fall, but he did stumble inside comically, arms flailing.

"Uh, play dirty much?" he asked as he turned.

"You started it," Keith replied flatly, lifting his shirt to look at the red mark where he'd been pinched.

"You deserved it," Lance defended vaguely, coming back to close the door as Keith went to the desk chair to grab the sweats he'd been wearing that morning. "No, no, no," Lance scolded a second later. "Put on a different pair of sweats or something."

Keith lifted the pants to his nose and sniffed. "These are still clean."

"You're disgusting," Lance decided, before grabbing the sweats right out of Keith's hands and chucking them in the laundry basket. "That's not how clothes work."

"I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter how 'dirty' an outfit is, it's still going to work just fine," Keith replied, undoing the button on his slacks and shoving them down his legs in the same moment. They were sticky and wet, and so left him chilled as soon as they were peeled away from his skin.

"You make me seriously question our friendship sometimes," Lance drawled, doing much the same as Keith in removing his wet clothing. Until they were both standing in their underwear, Keith doing his best not to check Lance out as he walked toward his dresser. He mostly failed.

It didn't help that Lance was completely unabashed as he reached his dresser and pulled out a new pair of boxers, before shucking his wet ones to the floor.

Keith should look away. It didn't matter that he'd seen Lance completely bare dozens of times before, because his thoughts were… They were quickly spiraling to places they shouldn't be. Which was what made his staring unacceptable.

Lance was just so… beautiful. Prosthetics, scars, long limbs, wiry muscle, tanned skin. Pretty blue eyes, stunning smile. Warm, welcoming voice with a hint of- of  _sex_  in near everything he said—even if Keith was the only one that registered it. Or reacted, really, because Lance possessed at least ten percent flirt in every word that came out of his mouth no matter who he was talking to.

What would they be doing in those very moments if things were different between them? If Keith was allowed to come up behind him, grab him by those skinny hips, and flip him around. Before slamming him into the wall and pressing their damp bodies roughly together. He'd slam his lips into Lance's, somehow more experienced because they'd have done this dozens of times prior. Before Lance would slip those long fingers up along the backs of his thighs, hefting him forward while a purposeful leg found its way between his own.

Or maybe they'd have come stumbling into the room, the same thoughts in their heads as they desperately stripped their clothes away. Maybe Keith would have pushed Lance playfully down on the bed before climbing on top of him, the both of them laughing while Lance hooked his hands under Keith's knees and tugged him closer. Until Keith was straddling Lance's hips, which would rock up against him in a slow, teasing effort that would bring a devious little smirk to Lance's lips.

Just thinking about it had Keith's mouth drying up, his blood pumping nauseously down between his legs. He shouldn't be thinking it, shouldn't allow himself such things. Not while Lance was standing  _right there_ —not outside the closed comfort of a bathroom with the door locked, the only occasional release he'd allowed himself these past years. He was letting his fantasies run away with him, allowing himself too much leverage.

He needed to stop thinking about it. He needed to lock these things back where they belonged.

And yet…

Lance had said his  _name_ , maybe even thinking the same sorts of things.

Maybe…

 _Maybe_.

"Keith?"

Physically jumping, Keith blinked, so involved in his own fantasies that he hadn't even noticed when Lance had turned back toward him, new boxers pulled up and replacing his modesty.

"Uh, yeah, what?" Keith asked stupidly, blushing despite himself and thankful that he was already standing a bit behind Lance's desk chair. It made it easier to step just a bit more to the side so as to make certain he was hiding the activity that was likely very visible through his underwear.

"Clothes?" Lance asked, holding up a new set while a small smile played on his lips.

"Oh, right." Keith caught the bundle as it was thrown his way.

"You alright, man?" Lance asked, taking a seat on the bed as Keith turned away. Normally he wouldn't be worried about Lance watching him change, but he also didn't usually have a raging boner most of the time either.

"Yeah, just tired," Keith said honestly, quickly dropping the wet boxers and slipping on the new pair of Lance's, making sure to tuck his dick into the band in order to hide it as well as possible. Thankfully, the sweats Lance had given him were pretty thick and the t-shirt long, so he should be okay until everything "calmed down."

"It's been a long couple of days," Keith went on, before realizing what he'd said. "Not- Not that I haven't enjoyed being here, or something." He cast Lance an apologetic eye over his shoulder.

"It's fine." Lance just shrugged. "I know it's probably been, ah, a little outside your comfort zone, all things considered."

Humming in response, Keith felt a bit more comfortable fully dressed, but still kept a safe distance between himself and Lance. Going to the bathroom, he grabbed the brush Lance had previously given him before beginning to meticulously comb the remaining knots out of his hair. Initially, the practice had been tedious for him, putting so much time and effort into something so useless. But these days, combing his hair was kind of… therapeutic. It gave him a kind a rhythm to follow, which calmed him down. Something small to focus his attention on.

"Uh, speaking of the last few days…" Lance's voice echoed into the bathroom, his hesitance drawing Keith into the doorway.

He was still sitting on the bed, dressed in nothing but his underwear as he twisted his fingers together.

Somehow, Keith could tell by the uneasiness in his tone where this was going. But he feigned ignorance anyway, not knowing what else to do with how his heart surged up into his throat.

"What is it?" he asked, pausing in his brushing if only because he could feel the way his fingers sparking with nerves.

"I, uh…" Lance reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, redness rising up his face in the same moment. "I just wanted to clear up what- what happened yesterday. You know, with me and, uh, what you…walked in on…"

Keith's gaze dropped to the floor. "Oh. Of course." He honestly had no idea what else he could say. His thought processes were too clogged with the sound of his heartbeat in his ears.

There was a pause between them, before Lance sighed. "Look, it's not- It wasn't cool. And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable or anything like that."

Keith worried his bottom lip and remained looking at the carpet. "It's fine."

"And I swear, it's not a big deal," Lance went on, laughing a bit as he did. "It's just… We spend so much time together, and you're- you're an attractive guy." Lance cleared his throat. "You know that. It's not like you're who I think about every time I- Because you're  _not_. You're definitely not."

Another awkward laugh, while Keith could slowly feel his whole chest collapsing in on itself, even as his ability to comprehend failed to catch on.

"I mean, it's only because, you know, you're here and I just… It doesn't  _mean_  anything. It  _definitely_  doesn't mean anything. I'm not, like, interested in you… like that. You're my closest friend, but it's not like- like I want to  _marry_  you or something, or- or jump into bed I guess. With you. Obviously I don't want to marry you—I don't know why I said that. Uh, anyway…"

Another pause, Keith doing his best to hold himself together even as every piece of skin he possessed felt as though it were going to fake away into nothing.

"Keith…?"

"Right, of course," he choked out, his hold on the brush tightening all the while. He didn't look up. "I didn't think any different."

"You… didn't?" Lance asked.

"We've known each other for years," Keith reasoned, all the while feeling the way the brush was about to snap in his hand. Forcing himself, he set it atop the dresser, practically having to pry his fingers free. "I think we'd have realized a long time ago if there was something else going on."

"I guess that's… true…" Lance agreed.

But Keith could barely hear him. It was like all the blood in his body had surged back up. Up so harshly that it was rushing his brain, leaving him lightheaded and unsteady. But also claustrophobic and hot, trapped in that room with Lance while everything inside of him shriveled.

"I'm, uh…" His feet carried him toward the door, his whole body practically begging for an escape.

"Keith?"

"I'm just… gonna go for a walk," he said quickly, not even registering that he was touching the doorknob even as he turned it. "It's too hot up here."

"Oh, well I can turn on a fa-"

"I'll be back later." Without another word, Keith slipped out into the hall.

He hadn't once looked up at Lance during their exchange.

He was too busy trying to fight his way through a world that seemed to be tipping all around him, knocking him off balance even as he scaled his way down the stairs and cornered tightly around the doorway into the kitchen. If anyone else was around, he didn't notice them. He was too preoccupied with trying to get out, to  _get away_. Too desperate.

But even as he stumbled out the door and down the stairs, the feeling of impending suffocation never left him. Which was only more terrifying. He needed to be somewhere, anywhere, but there. And so he kept walking, his breath becoming choppier and choppier as he blindly reached the tree line. He hardly noticed he was beneath the shade, hardly even noticed the trees until he tripped and fell into one.

His hands scraped harshly against the bark, legs buckling as he toppled. Hard. So hard that as he tried to catch himself, he felt his wrists spraining beneath his weight, legs bruising despite what little protection the sweatpants provided.

Swallowed up by the foliage and breathing heavily on his hands and knees, Keith's whole back bowed upward, as if something were crawling up through him. Vomit, maybe, or perhaps some kind of parasite. It was burning through swiftly, his hair dragging across the dirt as he violently dry-heaved. Once, twice, his body preparing to expel whatever it was that was trying to get free.

Within seconds, it washed over him, leaving him gasping and sucking frantically for air. All while the tears erupted and streaked harshly down his cheeks.

This was where hope got him. And where it always left him. Alone and wrecked and never how he'd imagined.

He'd known better. He'd warned himself over and over and over again. He'd even managed to neutralize any sense of optimism over the years. All until yesterday, when his idiotic thoughts had sparked a fire that Lance had then dumped an ice-cold bucket of water over. Leaving him floundering and struggling to breathe.

Of course Lance didn't want him. He'd been deluded to think otherwise, too infatuated to see reality. He should have known better. Should have been more disciplined.

Because now it was all so,  _so_  much worse.

Unable to stifle the slight whine that escaped his throat, Keith instead reached up and covered his mouth with his hand, attempting and failing to smother his uncontrollable distress. Weak and shaky, he fell to the side, the tears still streaming as his chest hiccupped painfully. So painfully that he could barely get enough air to breathe.

He'd been so stupid. And foolish. And lovesick.

So pathetically  _hopeful_.

Now his entire chest felt like a sheet of paper being ripped in two.

And he had no one to blame but himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :'(
> 
> I'm known for angst for a reason I guess...

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr: skaylanphear


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